#PositivelyPurple is a global movement that celebrates and draws attention to the contribution of employees with disabilities around the world. In this podcast, Stuart Brain, Chair of Companies House Ability Network, and Michelle Wall, executive board champion for equality, diversity and inclusion and executive sponsor of the Ability Network, discuss the importance of the network and how it’s helping to build disability confidence across Companies House.     Transcript Stuart Brain: Hello and welcome to this leader to leader conversation with me, Stuart Brain. And I'm joined today by Michelle Wall. Michelle is our Director of Finance and Commercial. She's also the executive board champion for ED&I and the exec sponsor of the Ability Network. So a bit about me - my name is Stuart Brain. I'm a manager within the internal communications team and I'm also the chair of the Ability Network. And I have an invisible disability, which is Ankylosing spondylitis. Ankylosing spondylitis is a long term condition in which the spine and other areas of the body become inflamed. So, Michelle, tell us why disability inclusion is important to you and to Companies House. Michelle Wall: So I've always had a passion for disability inclusion, supporting family members who had deafness and physical difficulties and friends as well, who'd had accidents and were wheelchair users over the years. However, I started to experience vision loss myself due to a genetic condition about 10 years ago. So being part of the community is also very personally important to me. At Companies House, inclusion is a golden thread that runs through all our activity and we want to ensure we embed diversity in everything we do. Our ambition is to build an inclusive, positive culture where everyone can bring their whole selves to work. Disability inclusion is a critical part of that support that we give to colleagues, as it helps all colleagues to do their best work and creates an environment for our people to thrive and flourish. And focusing on what people can do, and not what they struggle to do, is really key for me. Without a strong disability inclusion programme, this won't happen. SB: That's great. And it really is important that we do create that environment of support for less-abled colleagues. One way we have done that is through our thriving Ability network. Our mission statement is empowering everyone to flourish at Companies House. Can you tell us a bit more about how we've been able to create a positive narrative about disability at work, through some of the work the network has done? MW: I can try. To show a positive narrative about disability at work is one that celebrates the contribution of people with disabilities in the workplace. As I said earlier, it's important that as an organisation we recognise the challenges and barriers that people with disabilities face, but also the strengths and skills that they bring. Being positive, open, and talking about disability empowers other people with disabilities to disclose their conditions and request reasonable adjustments without fear of discrimination or stigma. It also values them as an equal and respected member of the workforce who can thrive and succeed with the right support and opportunities. I think colleagues from our networks have been heavily involved in shaping and introducing the Civil Service Workplace Adjustment Passport into the organisation. I have one myself. These adjustments can include changes to our ways of working and other practices that support colleagues with disabilities. Encouraging collaboration where people with disabilities are involved in decision making or problem solving, and where their perspectives and ideas are valued and appreciated is one way of creating a really positive narrative. The Ability Network has been really successful this year. Many colleagues have been sharing their stories about their disabilities as part of the ‘This is us’ campaign on the Intr

To mark the ‘UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2021’ we’re proud to be supporting Purple Space with their #PurpleLightUp event on Friday 3 December and joining the global conversation, leader to leader, between CEOs and employees with disabilities.   In this podcast, our CEO Louise Smyth and members of our Ability Network, Stuart Brain and Martyn Flynn, discuss the importance of celebrating the economic contribution of employees with disabilities, why disability networks are such a powerful vehicle for cultural change and what purposeful leadership means to them.’   Transcript Stuart Brain: Hello! My name is Stuart Brain. I am the chair of the Ability Network here in Companies House, which supports our colleagues and allies living with health conditions and disabilities. I'm joined today by the vice chair, Martin Flynn and our CEO, Louise Smyth. The 3rd of December is purple light up which is the international day of persons with disabilities and highlights the value that 386 million disabled employees around the world, bring to the workplace. Hi Louise. So why is Companies House chosen to support this year's purple light up?    Louise Smyth: Hi, Stu. I'm absolutely delighted to be doing this video and taking part in purple light up provides a perfect opportunity for Companies House to visibly celebrate the economic contribution of employees with disability and shine a light on the work of those driving disability inclusion in our organisation, which is really important to us. Every single one of our employees plays an important part in helping us to achieve our vision, deliver the excellent services to our customers and ultimately, to drive confidence in the UK economy.     SB: Fantastic. Thanks Louise. And I'm totally with you. I'm really excited to be supporting purple light up again this year and our Cardiff office looks amazing lit up purple again. And as you mentioned, all of our employees can help play a part and help us deliver our vision and deliver successful products services to our customers. So why is it do you think that learning directly from our employees with disabilities can be such a powerful vehicle for culture change here at Companies House?    LS: You’re right, it really can be powerful. It's important that we learn from everyone and that includes our disabled colleagues. So, each of them will have their own experience to bring to the table, and it will be different in every case. Both from the perspective of working within Companies House and how we need to shape our culture so everyone can bring their whole selves to work. But also, to provide insight, we need to be representative of our customers and the people that we serve. And so, disabled, colleagues can bring that insight of how things that we put out, services that we put out there, can impact disabled people and how they're going to experience that. So I think that's really important for us.     SB: That's great. And I'm super proud of the brilliant work that colleagues from our Ability Network do to support our culture change. And also, really proud that we have great leadership from the top down here in Companies House. With all of our executive team engaged as senior sponsors of our many people networks. So, regards to leadership, what do you think are the characteristics of purposeful leadership?     LS: Well, thanks Stu. I'm glad you think there’s great leadership at Companies House. For me, purposeful leadership is achieved by empowering, motivating and energizing everyone to reach their full potential. And to do that, we need to have open conversations, we need to have trust, that's really important. And we need that trust to build people's confidence and remove barriers for Them particularly for people with disabilities. Some good examples of that could include making sure our recruitment processes are fully inclusive and that we’re able to make the adjustments to support everyone. Could be having an interview

In this episode, Meg talks with Ruth Frost and Rebecca Strange who work in the recruitment team within the People Transformation directorate. Also, to Si Robins who is Head of Agile Delivery, working in the directorate of Digital Data and Technology (DDaT). This directorate is currently expanding massively and we discuss this during this episode, so tune in to find out if there's an opportunity to suit you.  We’re also recruiting for a number of other new roles at Companies House. See our latest vacancies on Civil Service Jobs and apply now.    Transcript  Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to a new podcast episode from Companies House. Today we are talking to three exciting colleagues. So, a big hello to Rebecca Strange and Ruth Frost who work in the recruitment team within the People Transformation directorate. And, also, hi to Si Robins who is Head of Agile Delivery, working in the directorate of Digital Data and Technology (DDaT). This directorate is currently expanding massively and that's something that we're here to chat about in more detail today. So, if you're feeling that it's time for a change and flexibility is something that appeals to you, then I’d definitely suggest that you listen on. So, hi everyone. How we doing today?     Ruth Frost: Hiya Meg, good thanks.    Rebecca Strange: Hi Meg. Thanks for having us.     MH: So, my first question is for Ruth. Please can you give me a bit of an insight into your role? And what you do and how that helps to shape Companies House.     RF: Yeah, Meg. Yes, of course I can. So, my name is Ruth and I've been at Companies House for almost three years now, and I work in the recruitment team. So, I am one of our recruitment managers and I have the real privilege of being able to advertise some of our great roles. We have a lot to offer at Companies House. As you said earlier, Meg, we've got lots on offer at the moment and hopefully, there's something for everybody, whatever area of work you're interested in. I think we probably can guarantee we've got something for you. If it's not out currently, keep an eye on things that will come out in the next few weeks and months. I have the real pleasure of being able to just see people through that recruitment journey from initial applications, through to interview and through to bringing our new starters into our business and really helping them feel part of our great culture and all that we've got to offer at Companies House.  I also have another role within the organisation and I am one of the chairs of one of our great employee networks. That's something that we do in Companies House to really make sure that everybody’s voice is heard, we've got real representation across our inclusive and diverse group of staff. And I am chair of our Working Families Network. So I help to represent the voice of Working Families around the organisation. So yeah, that's me.     MH: Thank you Ruth. That's really great. That's really good insight. I didn't know some of that. So that's really, really good. Si, I'd like to come to you next if I can.     Si Robins: Yeah, sure can. Thanks. I'm Si, I'm the head of the Agile Delivery Profession. Indeed. As you said so, a big part of my role is working with and supporting our agile delivery managers in leading their teams in delivering Digital Services. They’re services that are used by businesses and our colleagues, when doing all the filings that they need to do to comply with legislation. I’m also head of our community of practice at our agile community and that is aimed at delivering best practice in how we do agile delivery. We use the scrum framework if you're in the know, but also helping colleagues across Companies House, benefit from agile ways of working. And then, third thing is, I work closely with all the other heads of profession to a strategic level on things like capacity planning, so we make sure that we have confidence in delivering our commitments, in our portfolio. But also we're do

At Companies House, we are dedicated to being an inclusive, innovative and welcoming employer, one that supports people and encourages them to ‘find their passion’ by developing their skills and careers. But don’t just take our word for it. In this podcast you can hear from Martyn Flynn, Head of Resourcing at Companies House, in which he talks about the unique culture at Companies House and the importance of diversity and inclusion. Over the next few weeks, in our new series of features, we will also be showcasing some of our fantastic employees, who will reflect on their career at Companies House and how they have been able to find their passion.  Transcript Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to “Meet the team” by Companies House. Today, I am joined by Martin Flynn, Head of Resourcing, at Companies House. We are going to be discussing diversity and inclusion today, which I'm really excited about. This is an opportunity for us to celebrate our achievements in this space and share what we're doing as an organisation. I think having a sense of belonging, being able to be your authentic self, and feeling you have a voice are vital for all inclusion. So, on that note, hello Martin and welcome. How are you?   Martin Flynn: Yeah, great. Thank you, Meg. How are you?   MH: Yes, good. Thank you. Not too bad. So obviously just a note for the listeners we are recording this remotely. So, fingers crossed, it all goes well. Bear with us.   MF: Technology, fingers crossed.   MH: Yeah, so my first question is, what is diversity and inclusion and what does it mean to us as an organisation? And could you speak a bit about our D&I ambition?   MF: Yeah. Sure. That's a good question. I think for Companies House diversity is really about understanding that each individual is really kind of unique and that we do recognize those individual differences. So, these can both be visible and invisible and along the dimensions of things such as gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, age, physical abilities, for example. So, these differences mean everyone brings something different to our organisation. Different life experiences, skill sets, thoughts, ideas, innovation. So, it's really important that we recognize, respect, and value these in a safe and positive environment. Ultimately, it's about understanding each other. I suppose celebrating and welcoming these differences that each individual has. Inclusion then is all about having a sense of belonging. You know where the different groups or individuals with these differences are then accepted, welcomed, and treated fairly, and equally. So, if you have an inclusive culture, it makes the individual or the group of people feel valued, feel kind of respected for who they are. This for Companies House is for all people to just feel comfortable, and confident to bring their whole and brilliant selves to work. So, we want everyone to feel that they are respected, and that they are treated fairly and this means that then everyone has the opportunity to perform to their full extent of their potential, they are rewarded fairly, and they're recognised for the contribution that they make to Companies House. But it is also important that our diversity reflects the communities and the citizens that we serve so that we can better understand them and serve them as well.   MH: Yeah, absolutely. That was a very good answer, I must say. So, we've launched a campaign this week which will showcase our brilliant D&I networks. And I know that you've got a personal passion for these and supporting our diverse colleagues. So, would you mind sharing a bit of your own D&I story?   MF: No, not at all. Yeah, you're right. I am really passionate and proud of the great networks that we have here Companies House. When I talked about inclusion, I suppose a sense of belonging. You know, obviously inclusion networks have really helped to bring our people together and create those safe environmen

In this podcast Meg speaks with Michelle Wall, Director of Finance. They discuss how we deliver value through efficient use of resources. This is the final podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals.   Transcript   Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to another episode from Companies House. We have recently launched our new 5-year strategy, and one of our strategic goals is about how we deliver value through efficient use of resources. So, I'm here today with Michelle Wall, Director of Finance at Companies House. And today Michelle is going to give us a bit of an insight into her work and how that work runs through, who we are and what we do. So, hi Michelle, how are you?     Michelle Wall: I'm very good. Megan, how are you?     MH: Yes, I'm well, thank you. I'm just going to jump in straight away with the first question. I know how busy you are! So could you please tell me a little bit about your role and how it contributes to us as an organisation?    MW: Okay, so I'm the Director of Finance and Commercial and I cover 4 areas in terms of activity. So financial transactions, that’s the money coming in and the money going out, so what people generally think of as the finance team. All that purchasing, order processing and payroll activity.     I've got a strategic finance and business partnering team. They’re a new team, and they’re delivering, what I call the looking up and looking out. So they're looking forward, they’re supporting the business, understanding our strategic finance needs – have we got the money that we need, when we need it? And if we haven't, putting those plans in action to make sure we get that sorted.     I've got a commercial team. They cover sort of procurement and buying third-party contract, supporting the business through the contract management and the life of those contracts. I also have some responsibility for risk management and assurance. So alongside all of that, making sure that we're understanding our risks and making sure that all our governance processes are delivering the activity that they need to. I'm also Exec Champion for equality, diversity and inclusion. And that's something I'm very passionate about.    MH: Well, that's quite a breadth of things there. The one I found most interesting was sort of the horizon scanning team.     MW: Yeah.     MH: You sort of mentioned it at the beginning. Like, for me, I wouldn't even know that that's something that we would be doing at Companies House. So that's really interesting.     MW: So that is a new piece of activity and became even more of a focus for us. We used to be what's called a trading fund and even though we were a government organisation and civil servants, we were financially independent. Due to a decision at the centre, we lost our trading fund status in April last year. And as a consequence, we now need to do, we’re part of the vote funding system, we’re part of the spending reviews, and that's activity that we didn't do before. So we need to be able to demonstrate that we've got really good plans in that place to make sure that our spending requests are acknowledged and people give us money for it. So that's a new team with a much more structured focus in ensuring what we're doing.     It's also supporting the activity for the new strategy, one of the reasons that we're here today. In terms of ensuring that all that new activity that we're doing and the way that we're changing is financially sustainable.     MH: Thank you. So how do we make sure that we have the right resources when we need them? And that they are operated efficiently?   MW: I could do a very short answer and just say plan, plan, plan! We recognize that we've published a very ambitious strategy and vision for the future for Companies House. And that's given us a really good understanding of exactly what we're going to need in terms of resources. But I think resources, when people talk about resources, they forget that resourc

In this podcast Meg speaks with Martin Swain, Director of Strategy Policy and Communications. They discuss how we combat economic crime through active use of analysis and intelligence and how we plan to develop this in the future. This is the fifth podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals.   MH: Hello and welcome to another podcast episode from Companies House. We have recently launched our new five-year strategy and one of our strategic goals is all about how we ‘combat economic crime through active use of analysis and intelligence’. So, I'm here today with Martin Swain, who is the Director of Strategy, Policy, and Communications, at Companies House. And today Martin's going to give us a bit of an insight into his work and how that work runs through who we are and what we do.     Hi Martin, how are you?     MS: I am alright, how you doing?     MH: Yeah, not bad. Thank you. So, I'm just going to start off my first question which is, can you tell me a little bit about your role and how it contributes to us as an organisation.     MS: Yeah, no problem. So, I mean you just stabbed my job title, which is kind of set it on the tin. So, I'm a Director for Strategy, Policy and Communications. That's my main roles and obviously, you know involved in developing the new five-year strategy that we launched recently and involved with lots of policy development work and communications work. But, I guess around economic crime, I have a role to lead for the board around some of the economic crime policy and our enforcement and intelligence policy, working with our service owner Stuart Morgan in that area to kind of frame how we are taking forward our approach now with the current powers that we have but also starting to shape what our future strategy for intelligence and enforcement will be when we get the new powers that we hope will get parliamentary time for, will get very soon.    MH: Cool. So, how does Companies House at the moment work with law enforcement?     MS: Yeah. That's where so we've got a great relationship with a lot of law enforcement agencies. And you know, we already do a great amount of work but I suppose it's really important upfront to say that, you know, the vast majority of companies are law-abiding and they follow the rules of the Companies Act and they comply with their requirements. So, I think it's really important to say that it is a minority of companies that are used for economic crime or illicit activities or illegal activities. So, that's really important to say upfront. But you know, we already do an awful lot to support law enforcement. We provide data where we are able to support investigations. We look at trends on the register and try to establish where we can see whether there's potentially suspicious activity. We will always follow up where there are reports of fraudulent activity and take whatever action we can. And as I say, you know, really developing more and more all the time those relationships with those key law enforcement agencies like the National Crime Agency, local police, regional police, but also working with things like the National Economic Crime Centre.    MH: Right. Well that's quite a breadth of different places and well I think it’s like quite interesting about this goal. There are obviously a few different ones but this one is sort of the newest.     MS: Yeah, and I'd say Meg this is probably for me and I shouldn't say that but it's probably the most exciting goal because this is really taking Companies House into new territory. We are moving away from being just a register to being much more of an assertive partner in law enforcement, you know and colleagues have done some really great work over the last few years within Companies House to really start us on that journey. But, I think putting this as a goal of our strategy front-and-centre that we really want to play the biggest part we can in tapping economic crime and fraudulent activi

In this podcast Meg speaks with Robbie McNeil, Service Owner of Get Company Information. They discuss how we maximise the value of the register to the UK economy. This is the fourth podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals.   MH: Hello and welcome to another episode from Companies House. We have recently launched our new five-year strategy and one of our strategic goals is about how we maximise the value of the register to the UK economy. So, I'm here today with Robbie McNeil who is the service owner for ‘Get Company Information’ at Companies House, and today Robbie is going to give us a bit of an insight into his work and how that runs through who we are and what we do. Hi Robbie. How are you?   RM: I am fine, thanks.   MH: Good. Excited to record this podcast today?   RM: Obviously, we all look forward to being on camera so much.   MH: Of course, of course. So, my first question to you is, can you tell me a little bit about your role and what it means to us as an organisation?   RM: Yeah, of course. So, as the service owner for ‘Get Company Information’, probably the easiest way to explain it is if you think about the core duties of Companies House, so creating and dissolving companies by adding or removing them from the company register, collecting and maintaining information about those companies, and then that third strand of what we do is making that information available to the public and it's that third duty that the ‘Get Company Information’ service exists to satisfy.   MH: Yeah. A pretty important job, then.     RM: It is, you know, especially in terms of our move to a service-based model. You know that's key to our transformation as an organisation. Moving from that sort of a functional silo based approach where people focused on just their part of the service to a wider service team that encompasses everybody from policy advisors who shape what it is we're here to do through the digital teams that design and build our services and to the operational teams that make those services work for our customers, all with a shared sense of purpose. Brilliant people building brilliant systems to deliver a brilliant service to our customers. So, it's really great to be a service owner and being brought back to the heart of that.   MH: Thank you. That's really good. And my next question is can you tell me a bit about the value of the data on our register?   RM: Yeah. One of the reasons why this particular service is so close to my heart, I think, when I first joined Companies House, which was a long time ago, and I'm not going to tell you the year; the then CEO used to meet every new recruit and his explanation of the deal that underpins Companies House has always stuck with me throughout my career and that that deal being that in exchange for the protection of limited liability, information about a company is made public so that people can make informed decisions about dealing with it. So, I've always remembered that. That making that information public has always been a key part of my understanding about what we're here to do. But that data itself is worth nothing, if it's not out there being used and so back in the day, when I first joined it was a relatively specialist thing to deal with company information. You had your search agents and they had actually set up offices in Crown Way or near our other offices just so they could come in and get the microfiche and read the microfiche and print bits out and so on. So, you know things have moved on hugely since then. As we've made our data available online and more recently available for free on our CHS service, we've really opened it up for people to use and seen a huge increase, you know orders of magnitude increase in terms of the people accessing the data. So, I think is over 9 billion searches last year, which is when you think the size of Companies House as an organisation to be satisfying that many searches for data in a year is j

In this podcast Meg speaks with Ross Maude, Director of Digital at Companies House. They discuss how our registers and data inspire trust and confidence. This is the third podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals.    Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to another podcast episode from Companies House. We have recently launched our new five-year strategy and one of our strategic goals is all about how “our registers inspire trust and confidence” and the use of our data. Data is one of the backbones of Companies House. And today I'm here with Ross Maude, Director of Digital, at Companies House. And today Ross is going to give us a bit of an insight into his work and how that work runs through who we are and what we do. So, hi Ross. How are you?     Ross Maude: Good. Thanks, Megan. Yes, very well.     MH: Starting to feel a little bit festive?    RM: I am. Christmas tree is up. The lights are up. Yes, I'm starting to get there. Almost there, almost at the Christmas period. So, looking forward to a chance of a good break.     MH: Excellent. Not long to go now.     RM: How about you? Are you ready?     MH: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a quiet one this year. So not too much to get ready luckily.     RM: Relying on delivery for most of the presents, but yes.     MH: Yes, definitely. So, I'm going to kick off with my first question. So, being the Director of Digital, what does that mean, first of all to you and to us as an organisation?    RM: So, the strategic question about data and having trusted and valued data that inspires trust and confidence. I think it's really important. Perhaps because I'm a slightly sort of digital person. I think data is super important, how we treat it, how we manage it, how we look after it. But that's a starting internal view. But I think what's more important actually is what the register is, why it exists, and it's always been sort of a, you know, if people are dealing with a legal entity, they can look up the individuals and the history of the entity and they can make investment choices based on you know, who forms the leadership of that organisation and what their history of their account filings look like for example. So, it allows people to understand, you know, what's inside the legal entity they're working with. What it's made up of and that's really really important. And actually, you know, right now this second, we had some figures last year from some of the credit reference agencies. There is something like 1.7 trillion pounds is invested in UK business every year and the credit reference agencies use our data as one of the foundational elements to make those decisions. And so, I suppose that data, if our data is being used to inform that level of investment then you know, it's so important that we have it right and we have it available and we have it in the right format that people can access as easily as possible to make those decisions.     MH: Yeah. So, you touched on the credit reference agencies. Obviously, our register and the data is trusted by a variety of users. Can you give me a bit more of an insight into some of the other groups that might use our register?    RM: So, I think it’s an interesting one. So, the data is used by a huge range of different stakeholders, if I can use that phrase. So, obviously other companies look at each other in the first instance. Individuals, who look, I mean interesting one of their kind of highest hit rates is when a football club has a change of directorship, you know. That drives huge traffic towards our register. People have a look at who it is, what's going on. But, you know, there's more than that. So obviously investors, you know, investing groups would look at the data to make investment decisions. I have kind of touched on that before. It's used by researchers from all different areas to understand what's happening in the economy. It might be used by people like Transparency International Group who would be

In this podcast Meg speaks with Emma Hares, an Operational Manager at Companies House. They discuss our brilliant services and how they give great user experience. This is the second podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals.  Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to another podcast episode of “Meet the team” by Companies House. We have recently launched our new five-year strategy and one our strategic goals is ‘Our brilliant services that give a great user experience’. Our customers are at the heart of everything we do and today I am here with Emma Hares, who is an Operational Leader at Companies House. Emma is going to give us an insight into how that great user experience is provided and the inner workings of the team that speak to our customers every day. Thanks for joining me Emma, how are you?  Emma Hares: Thank you for having me. I am really good, thank you.   MH: Oh, good. So, I am just going to jump straight in with my first question. I remember us having a meeting back in January in the office before all of this working from home started. So, how have you adapted to working from home in 2020. I remember saying that I did it, you know, on and off and I knew that other teams, the directorate, would work from home from time to time but you were like “Oh, that’s not really an option for us. We don’t do that. We are only in the office”. So, how have you found it? How has it been?   EH: Yeah, well, it feels like such a long time ago that we had that conversation now. So, not only a long time ago in time but a long time ago in our technical abilities to work remotely as well. So, some of the operational area could already work from home but it depended on their job role. But they really were the minority of the area really. At the time we spoke in January, we were definitely planning to enable a lot more people to work at home, but we wanted to make sure that we were fully supporting them to do that. Especially, our customer facing colleagues. I’d say we were looking at taking about 18 months for us to get there all together but got a big push from COVID and it ended up taking us a few weeks to roll it out. It was a massive co-ordination of which work streams are priority and who needs what type of equipment and stuff. So, but, throughout all of that time, the safety of our colleagues has been the absolute priority and enabling as many people as possible to stay at home was always top of the list. And, it hasn’t just been keeping people safe in a physical sense but also their mental wellbeing. So, we’ve done a lot of communication to make sure people are talking regularly and checking in on how people are and really trying to keep the amazing sense of community going, that is really loved by so many people in Companies House.   MH: Yeah  EH: So, but I would say that even though we have got the vast majority of people working at home, some of the work we do in the operational area can’t be done at home. So, we do still have a small number of people in the building. But, a lot of work is being done to provide a safe environment for us to be working in when we are in the building. So, it’s a complete change of direction from what we were in in January working towards smarter ways of working, sharing desks and taking up less space in the office and now we are in a situation where we’ve got our own desks spread really far apart with lots of hygiene and social distancing measures in place. And I would just like to add one thing to that as well that it’s really important that we’ve got someone in the building because we do provide a service to our NHS tenants. And without us being in the building, we wouldn’t have been able to do that during the lockdown. So, that’s been something that has been just as important for internal customers as our external customers.   MH: Yeah, definitely. So, how have you found that balance between delivering our excellent services and protecting our colleagues. It r

In this podcast Meg speaks with Angela Lewis, Head of People Transformation at Companies House. They discuss how our culture enables our brilliant people to flourish and drives high performance. This is the first podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals.  Transcript MH: Hello and welcome to another episode of “Meet the team” by Companies House. Today, I am joined by Angela Lewis, our Head of People Transformation. She's someone who has an extensive career in HR and has been at Companies House alone for nearly nine years. She is a ray of sunshine and I am so looking forward to speaking to her today. So, without another second to wait, welcome Angie.    AL: Aww, I love the fact that Meg you called me a ray of sunshine. That might be my nicest thing all day.    MH: Oh well, it's true. You okay?     AL: Yes. I'm very good. Thank you. You are the perfect end to a long day.     MH: Yes. Well, it is hard to find a tiny little gap in your calendar. So, it was the only gap in weeks, I think.     AL: Well, I was definitely pleased to give it to you. That's for sure.     MH: Thank you. So, I'm going to just kick off with my first question and it is to address our recent amazing achievement, which has been awarded to us from Investors in People, which is the Platinum Status. Can you tell me a little bit about the journey to getting there and what's next?     AL: Okay, happy to do that and can I say I'm still you know a month on from finding out that we were awarded the Platinum. Still smiling about it because so few organisations are awarded this sort of level of assessment. So, it does really matter. And you know three years ago Meg, we were awarded the gold level which is amazing as well. But, we set ourselves a goal back then and I remember talking to Louise, our Chief Exec and saying, you know, wouldn't it be amazing for us to show in three years that we're a platinum organisation and she said, “Oh, I love the fact you aim high Angie.” and I said, “Well, actually this is about ambition, but it's also about, if we really do aim high, the only thing that we can have is a much better experience. But also, imagine what that would be like for our colleagues”. So, we've worked really hard over these three years to sort of focus on the things that we were given in terms of feedback from the gold assessment. Particularly around leadership and making sure that our colleagues could understand the sort of role and purpose of Companies House and to really focus on how can they bring their whole self to work and how can we allow people to truly flourish which has been brilliant because it links directly with our Companies House strategy. And this isn't sort of a surprise that our focus on the strategic goal of creating a culture where colleagues can come to work and flourish and drive high-performance. So, there's been this link for the last three years and to get that validated by an external organisation to say “you're on the right track. You've made huge progress”, and for us it's a continuum because it's not about sitting back now and saying, oh, well, we've cracked it. It's about maintaining those levels, learning from the sort of advice and recommendations they put in, celebrating where we've done really well and holding on to it. And you know, it's really exciting because it genuinely is an organisational wide achievement. And that was one of the main sort of comments from IIP, was that everyone they spoke to was with us in terms of understanding what we wanted to achieve but also felt part of this sort of very exciting transformation journey we are on, but also part of our culture change journey.     MH: Yeah, I think what you said then about, it runs through everyone. It's not like a top-level thing. Those values are really throughout and I've definitely experienced that and I think it goes to show that everyone still feels it. We've been working at home now since March as have a lot of people and

John-Mark Frost chats about what he’s learnt about himself in a professional and personal capacity over recent months. Also, about how customers and colleagues have been kept safe, revised levels of service and the golden thread running through Companies House: diversity and inclusion.   Transcript Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to a brand-new episode of “Meet the team” from Companies House. Like many things big and small, this series has not been what we planned in January. In our first two episodes of “Meet the team” which I will link in the show notes of this episode, we recorded with Oceanne and Toby in our Cardiff office. But since then due to government guidelines following the coronavirus outbreak, I now find myself hosting this episode at home in my living room with my dog on my lap.  I'd like to welcome JM Frost who is the Director of Operations at Companies House. He is someone that as soon as we started this series, I knew I wanted a record with. That was then and this is now and after everything that's happened over the past few months and the work that we've done supporting our customers during this difficult time, I'm even more excited to introduce him. So welcome JM. How are you?    John- Mark Frost: I'm good. Thank you Megan.   MH: How have you been finding this time?    J-MF: Yeah, it's been interesting. So a mix of being in the office and working with colleagues there and the mix now obviously of working from home as well. And of course, I've got two reasonably young children. So being at home, there was always a reason I knew shouldn't be a teacher and this confirmed that I definitely chose the right vocation and choice of career. So, let's say yeah, we've all survived we've almost got to summer holidays, so all is good.    MH: I think teachers have actually gained a lot of credit during this time.    J-MF: Yes, teachers and hairdressers.    MH: Yes, definitely. So my first question is what have we been doing at this time to support our customers?   J-MF: Yeah. So, lots and it's been really interesting to make sure that we've taken a lot of care to make sure that we had a balance between wanting to try and provide really high levels of customer service,maintain the sorts of service that we would provide during normal times as much as possible, with of course balancing that with keeping our colleagues safe. And so we were fortunate in some ways the majority of the services that our customers use are already online. So we've been able to keep them working, keep them going and support our customers through those online services, but we do have some particularly some of our more complex cases, complex case work. Where it was very much paper-based. So trying to maintain those services has been more challenging in terms of our customers often were at home. They weren't able to get out, weren't able to print or even if they were at home that the directors of the company they needed to sign things were at home somewhere else. So it was a real challenge, so it was looking for us to work with legal colleagues and policy colleagues to look at innovative ways that we could try and do it differently.   So what did the law require us to do in terms of the Companies Act and how could we try and support our customers to do some of that differently? So we've stood up new services, so we've got the emergency filing service where customers can go on and upload an electronic copy of a document and we focus that on the services that weren't already electronic and where customers couldn't already do things digitally. So we've done that. I mean even within a couple of weeks of lockdown we'd launched an extension service which in the first month or so had 90,000 companies applying for extensions and we were able to give extensions to those companies entirely digitally so they knew they had more time to be able to file their accounts with us and we form part of working with BEIS, our kind of partner and parent departme

In the first episode of our new Meet the Team series, Meg speaks to Oceanne, about multiple uploads, new projects and cold January nights.   Transcript Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to Companies House Meet the Team podcast. My name’s Meg and I work in our external communications department, and I’ll be hosting this series. I’m here today with Oceanne. Oceanne Esparcieux: Hi MH: So hello Oceanne and welcome to our brand new series. Thank you so much for agreeing to be our debut guest. I feel so excited about this series and I’m really pleased to be sat here with you today. How are you? OE: I’m very well thank you. MH: Good, how’s January treating you so far? OE: It’s pretty dark. I don’t think I’ve seen daylight for a few months but it’s treating me pretty well. MH: I feel like we're coming out the other side. The weather looks nice for this weekend. OE: Yeah, I'm hopeful that we’ll see some sunshine soon. MH: So firstly can you just tell me your role title and how you fit into the wider team here at Companies House? OE: I'm an interaction designer and I work within the product team which is situated in the digital department. And my job is to basically design the digital services that we have at Companies House. So everything is moving away from being paper-based and is hopefully going to be online within the next few years. MH: That's fabulous. I think that's the way loads of places are trying to move. OE: I hope so because I hate speaking to people on the phone and I hate filling out forms, so if I can do it online, it’s a bit better. MH: It’s the future isn’t it? OE: Yeah. MH: So I've had this plan that we’re going to have these jokey opening questions to get us going at the start of every podcast, so obviously you’re the first. So I’m going to start with… cats or dogs? OE: Dogs. MH: Tea or coffee? OE: Coffee. MH: Introvert or extrovert? OE: Introvert. MH: Night owl or early bird? OE: Night owl. I’ve got one for you. MH: What? OE: Starter or dessert. MH: Both. Starter. OE: Good shout. MH: Okay, so, moving on. Back to work. Which piece of work are you really proud of? OE: I haven't been at Companies House for very long, so I've not had a chance to work on many services. But I did develop a service for applying for an extension for your filing deadline. And within that service, which has passed assessments and you can now use it online if you need an extension. Within that service, we have file upload and it was a pattern that we didn’t actually have in government yet. So I helped design it with my colleague, Ollie. So we helped build it and it's now available online. And it's not just a single file upload, you can upload multiple files. And it's going to be the standard across all of Companies House file uploads now. MH: That's really rewarding isn’t it. OE: Yep, definitely. MH: So why do users need to upload files? OE: If they are applying for an extension, they need to upload a file to provide evidence to the team within Companies House that will decide whether the extension will be granted. And at the moment when it’s paper-based or by email, 10% of all applications come with files attached. So we wanted to be able to give the user that same opportunity online as well. And it makes them feel like their application is going to be considered slightly better because they’re actually providing evidence for their reason. MH: Yeah, that's really interesting. It's not just a tick box, it's giving that evidence that people can see their reasonings behind. OE: They’re not just saying they’re ill, they’re saying I was ill and here’s a doctor's note. MH: Yeah, definitely. So why do stakeholders need the users to upload files? OE: So it allows the team, the internal team more information, to be able to make that decision. So not taking everything on blind faith, they’re actually being able to dig in a bit deeper and make sure that they can verify things. MH: So Oceanne, why do we need multiple file uploads? OE: Good qu

We spoke to Ceri Witchard, Regulator of Community Interest Companies, about the new online accounts filing service for CICs.   Transcript Gary Townley: Hello and welcome to a Companies House podcast. Thank you for downloading, or listening to this wherever you are. My name is Gary Townley. I'm part of the communications team here at Companies House. For those of you that don't know, Companies House is the agency responsible for registering and dissolving companies, collecting company information and making that information available to the public. We are sponsored by BEIS, that is, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy. We have 4 offices based all around the country. So one in Belfast, one in Cardiff, one in London and the other one, which I'm trying to think of now I can't think of, but it’ll come to me in a bit.   So a slightly different podcast today, in that I'm joined by Ceri Whitchard, who’s the Regulator of Community Interest Companies. We're going to be talking this morning about account filing online, which is a new service that is being introduced fairly shortly, I believe, so hi Ceri, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what a community interest company is?   Ceri Witchard: Yeah. Hi Gary, and thanks for having me here today. So community interest companies, or CICs, are social enterprises. So they were created in 2005 to give people a way of running a business, where they can get paid and can pay their staff but with a community benefit at its heart. So they're not charities, they are businesses, but they're set up to benefit particular groups of people or something in their community. And essentially they’re ordinary companies. They have to comply with all of the company law rules as well as some extra requirements for being CICs. They can be limited by shares, or by guarantee, and we’ve even got some on the record that are PLCs.   My office is responsible for regulating them. We check that when they set up they are genuinely going to deliver a benefit for a company and just keep a bit of a track that's going well and if we do get any complaints, we don't get very many, we do investigate just to make sure that people are doing what they say they're doing.   GT: Okay that’s great. Just the last office is in Edinburgh for anyone who's interested in that. So where is the community interest regulator based?   CW: So we're based in Cardiff. We have a small office within the Companies House building in Cardiff, which is really good for us because we obviously work closely with the teams there, including developing online services.   GT: Okay, so very much like a normal limited company do CICS have to file accounts annually?   CW: They do and it's really important that they remember this. You must file your accounts, even if your dormant, the same as any other company. And if you're a CIC, because you've got this special regulation around you alongside your accounts, you have to file your community interest report and the fee of 15 pounds.   GT: Okay. So ordinary limited companies have been able to file online for quite a while now. So why has this been produced for CICs and why is it a good option?   CW: It’s a really good option for CICs and we've been trying for a while to make sure they can benefit from the same range of services that any other company can have. As I said for a community interest company, you have to have your extra report and pay the fees. So we had to make sure all of that worked well. One of the main benefits is, we see an awful lot of CICs, they file their accounts with Companies House and they forget to attach that benefit report or to attach the fee. They come in by post, they then get rejected. It takes time for them to then meet the requirement and then they're getting a late filing penalty which obviously we don't want it's distracting them, it's an annoyance and it means they're not delivering their benefit while they're s

We spoke to Dominic Bonaker, founder and CEO of Odyssey, about what inspired him to start his own company.   Transcript Sara Jones: Hello, I'm Sara. I'm a Campaigns Manager at Companies House and with me today is Dominic Bonaker. He's the CEO of Odyssey, which is a web design agency in Cardiff. And we're going to be talking about young entrepreneurship and his company today for our new #GetBizzy campaign. So thank you for joining us.   Dominic Bonaker: Thank you for having me.   SJ: Let's just start by you telling me a little bit more about you and your company.   DB: Yeah, so, my name is Dominic. I'm 23 years old and I’m the founder and CEO of Odyssey.  As you said, we are a web agency based in Cardiff and we work with our clients to help them look better online. Whether that's a new website, whether it's a new shop and anything else on the web.   SJ: Okay. So what inspired you to actually start your company? Why did you decide to go off on your own?   DB: To be honest, I think it was because I couldn’t really work for anyone else. I was very kind of self-driven. I was very self-motivated and I didn't really like being told what to do a lot of the time. Especially when I knew that there was a better, or quicker, or faster or cheaper way of doing things. I felt that we were doing things because that's what we were told to do, and I didn’t like that.   So one thing that we try and incorporate into our business is that I don't think I'm any better than any of the employees. If they've got a great idea then they can bring it to me, and we can make it happen. We're not guided by these fixed guidelines at all.   SJ: Okay, and this isn't the first company that you've actually started is it? Tell me a little bit more about it?   DB: Okay, so, going back a little bit. So, the first company was set up in my first year of university and I thought ‘okay, I'm going to start a company and that's it, sorted, all done’.  That's not actually the case. There were certain requirements that I had to do as the director of the company, and I didn't really feel all that comfortable doing it back then. I had a lot of commitments with the university and some other things as well. So I just decided that I was going to close that company down and I was going to focus back on my studies a lot more.   In my final year of university, I knew that this was more what I wanted to do. I went to a few job interviews and didn't really like them. I didn't really like what they were trying to achieve and what they were trying to get out of me and that's not what I wanted to do. So I registered another company. I decided to call it Tech Tailors back then and that was the original company. Then as we grew we decided that we kind of outgrew that name. It was very much where we started so we decided to change it with Companies House.   So we're now called Odyssey. So we trade as Odyssey and Odyssey literally translates into journey. So it's all about that journey, from taking a client from nowhere to a beautiful website or improving their website or whatever that looks like to them.   SJ: Cool. Okay. So did you have any particular support from anyone? You know funders, investors, or maybe it was like an entrepreneurial body. Did you get any help?   DB: So I think when we first started out it was very much, we were very alone, because it was just me by myself starting out. I didn't really know what was out there in terms of other help or other organisations that were available. I did feel a little bit isolated in that respect. But then when it came to it, it was going online, googling, seeing what networking events were coming up, seeing what support there was out there and there's so much around that you just don't even see on a regular basis. And that was one thing that really did kind of boost the company. Just kind of going out there and just meeting new people, seeing what help we can receive and just going from there.   SJ: Okay, so obviously you're a

In our latest podcast, we find out more about how Mickela Hall-Ramsay started her community interest company (CIC) as a young entrepreneur.   Transcript   Sara Jones: Hi everyone. I'm Sara. I'm a Campaigns Manager at Companies House. Today I am joined by Mickela Hall-Ramsay who is the director of HR sports academy and today we’re going to be talking about her business as part of the #GetBizzy campaign.   So hi, Mickela, thank you for joining us today. And can you start by telling me a little bit about you and your company?   Mickela Hall-Ramsay: Yeah, as you said, my name is Mickela Hall Ramsey. I'm the founder and one of the company directors at HR Sports Academy.   I started up the business when I was 23 years old. So registered it as a CIC and have enjoyed the process ever so much, ever since. HR Sports Academy - we use sports to empower young people, we go into schools providing various different activities from running clubs, to after-school clubs, running P.E sessions, lunchtime sessions, literally everything throughout the whole day to really empower young people with skills which will allow them to develop and to just have fun and get fit, make new friends.   And then within the community as well, we do a number of activities. So we have a holiday camp which takes place during all school holidays. We have a youth club. We do competitive competitions, so we have teams that compete in leagues. We do tournaments, apprenticeships, traineeships, internships. It goes on and on, literally every and anything to support young people aged 3 up to the age of 23 years old.   SJ:  So there's lots of stuff going on. What made you want to start your company in the first place?   MHR: So, I've loved sports from a very young age. I was studying sports science at university and in 2007, my sister sadly passed away. She had Down’s syndrome and throughout her whole life, I noticed that there were limitations placed on what she would be able to do. And literally through the support of my family and my friends, she was able to literally just smash all of the goals and pretty much live a normal life. When she passed away, it was obviously hard for me but youth crime at the time was really really high. And even though I was dealing with this tremendous pain, I couldn't imagine what families were going through when their loved ones were still young and they had been murdered.   Sport had been a massive part of my life and it had always kept me. I felt safe. It developed a load of skills within me. It was just an amazing thing that provided me with so many benefits and I just wanted to provide the same benefits to young people who were recklessly losing their lives.   So in 2008 after finishing my undergrad I did a project which basically allowed me to set up a basketball camp for young people. It kind of just got them to mix with others within the borough from different schools and just create cohesion within Haringey and I absolutely fell in love with the idea of being my own boss. After finishing my masters and working for the council for a year, I decided to take the risk and set up my own organisation. My mum had previously set one up, a community interest company that is in memory of my sister, so I kind of like, got spurred on and the idea of knowing that it was possible through seeing her do it herself.   SJ: So your mum inspired you quite a lot then?   MHR: Yeah, definitely.   SJ: And did you get any advice from anyone or any organisations before you started?   MHR: Yes, so obviously my mum was definitely one of the people that helped me and provided me with advice since she had literally just done it. I also used Business Links. I know it's not around anymore, but Business Links was really really helpful in terms of providing me with the step by step guides. Where I needed to go, what I needed to do and that's kind of I suppose where I found out about Companies House as well.   SJ: And did you get any funding to help you g

This podcast is part of a series of case studies in which we speak to small business owners. Find out about the challenges and advantages of owning your own business, and pick up some advice on how to get started. Hair Host is a fast-growing salon based in Buckingham, near Milton Keynes. The salon was opened in September 2015 by Rebecca Blade with support from her parents, Julian and Janet Presant-Collins. Read the full case study on our website » www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/hair-host-llp   Transcript Jocelyn Keedwell: Hi, I'm Jocelyn and I am part of the communications team at Companies House. Today we're at Hair Host a salon in Buckingham as part of the latest small business case studies podcast series. Welcome, Julian and Rebecca.    Julian: Thank you.    JK: Thank you very much for having us here today, really appreciate your time.    JK: So maybe you can tell me a bit about the company and the business?    Rebecca: We're a growing Salon. We opened in 2015. There's eight of us now, and we want to build the business more, open more salons. So hopefully we'll do that soon.    JK: So do you do it on your own?   R: So there's myself and then my two business partners who are also my mum and dad Janet and Julian. I do the day-to-day running in the salon and then they run more of the backstage kind of things like bookkeeping and marketing.    JK: So do you need a lot of support Rebecca, not day-to-day, but maybe sort of behind the scenes?    J: No, certainly not day-to-day. I mean, we're certainly not the hairdressers in the in the family. We leave that to Rebecca and she does a terrific job in the salon, but obviously what you don't realise sometimes when you start a business is you can open premises, employe people, get them doing stuff on a day-to-day basis, but then behind the scenes you do need to almost create a marketing engine to keep creating noise and keep encouraging customers to come back to us and encourage new customers to step across the threshold for the first time, so that's an ongoing thing and then just basic stuff; payroll, managing holidays and things like that, which my wife does. It all takes time. So I think, it's fair to say we're probably more involved than we expected to be, but we're enjoying the journey.   JK: You're talking about the journey. So how did the salon start? Why were you inspired to open a salon? Is it something you've always wanted?   R: I've always wanted my salon. I've always wanted to be a hairdresser since I was very young. Since starting hairdressing I thought that's what I want. I want my own business.    JK: So you were really driven then you had that idea in your head.   R: Yeah from very early on.    J: Well, let me tell you that her head teacher once accosted me as I turned up at school and said I've had Rebecca's class for the day and as a father you sort of go ‘’Oh what's happened?’’ And she said they were talking about careers, and she said Rebecca said she wants to be a hairdresser, but she doesn't just want to be a hairdresser. She wants to have her own salon, so she has been very driven since young age.   JK: That's great. So, do you have a really clear vision of what you want your salon to be like when you were thinking about it?    R: Well a lot of clients find it very intimidating walking into a salon, you know? It's quite difficult for the first time especially. Some have told me that they've walked past wanting to go in and then not walked in and I don't want them to feel like that here. I want them to be able to walk in and feel welcome and that they can chat to anyone like they’re friends more than just clients and hopefully it's more of the living room feel rather than a salon feel.   JK: Brilliant. How did you start out? Was it registering as a limited company, was it finding premises or getting financial backing?   J: I think in terms of order of events, it's fair to say that we found these premises that were available, we talked about po

As a government organisation and a large employer, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is important to us. We’re committed to ethical and sustainable business practices, and take account of our social, economic and environmental impact. We speak to Leanne Hugglestone, our CSR Coordinator, about her passion for CSR and our responsibilities as a government organisation in helping the local community.   Transcript Tanya Lang: Hi there. My name is Tanya Lang and I'm part of the comms team here at Companies House. So for those of you who don't know who we are, we are the government agency who register dissolve and then keep company records and make those records available for inspection. Our sponsoring department is BEIS and that's the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and we've got 4 locations, Edinburgh, Belfast, London and Cardiff from where we are recording this very podcast.   First I'm joined today by Leanne Hugglestone, who is the corporate social responsibility or CSR coordinator here at Companies House. So I will let Leeanne introduce herself, Leanne.   Leanne Hugglestone: Hi, I'm Leanne Hugglestone. I've been working here at companies house for 15 years now, coming up to 16, and I've done many roles within Companies House. Starting off as a data processor, working my way through finance and IT, worked on a lot of big IT projects and then about 6 or 7 years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I had a year off work. During that time, I spent an awful lot of time within hospitals and in charity organisations, receiving help and guidance through what was quite a traumatic time.   Thankfully a year later, in May 2013, I came back to Companies House, full-time working. And it was then that I realised that a project I’d been working on before my diagnosis around management and making a difference projects. I delved into some of the information around volunteering at Companies House. We were allowed one day a year to volunteer in Companies House and not many staff knew about it. We wanted to make a difference for Companies House. So I asked if I could continue with this volunteering project to allow more staff to find out about it. And so we could utilise those days in order to help the community.   My main reasoning for asking if I could do this project is without volunteers, I wouldn't be here today. Without volunteers to make the cups of tea in the hospital, to drive the mini buses, to do the fundraising, the backpacking and the race for life. I wouldn't be here because the research and the medication that I'm on was actually created in Wales, and I wanted to utilise the volunteering here at Companies House to help towards making a difference in the community.   So from there, I went to the main board. Took the project to them and they fully agreed that I could do this volunteer initiative alongside my job in IT. Whereby the new HR Director at the time, Angela Lewis, picked up on the fact that we didn't actually have any recorded data for any kind of corporate social responsibility. So that means the fundraising that we do here in Companies House, we’ve got a very generous workforce, any of the volunteering, we don't have stats before 2013. So what she asked, was for me to leave IT and work with her for 6 months to research and develop corporate social responsibility for Companies House and compare us to other government agencies both in our government department area, but also just across the Civil Service in general.   We knew that the DWP had signed up for 30,000, out of the 30,000 Civil Service days, they'd signed up to try and do 10,000 days a year. We only had close to a thousand staff and they were allowed one day a year. So the maximum we could ever do was close to a thousand. But even that was if everybody took part. After 6 months, my role was made permanent because we found out that we were doing an awful lot already, but it just wasn't being recorded. So we developed a bu

New proposals will bring about the biggest changes for Companies House and the work we do since we began registering companies in 1844. We spoke to Alexandra Walters, Head of Policy at Companies House. Alex told us how the proposals aim to help combat economic crime and improve protection for people who run businesses. Companies HouseReformConsultationBusinessCompaniesUK BusinessTransparencyEconomic CrimeAccountancyfinancial servicespersonal data   Transcript   Gary Townley: Right. Thank you for downloading this Companies House podcast. My name is Gary Townley. I'm part of the External Communications team here at Companies House.   For those of you who don't know who we are, Companies House is an executive agency. We are sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, better known as BEIS.  Our role really is to drive confidence in the UK economy, and we do that by incorporating and dissolving limited companies. We register company information. We take that information from all the companies on our register and we make that that information available to the public. We've got 4 locations, all around the UK. So we've got one in Edinburgh, one in Belfast, one in London and our main office really is here in Cardiff, where we're recording this podcast this morning.   Now, I'm delighted to be joined by Alexandra Waters today who’s Head of Policy here at Companies House. Welcome Alex.   Alexandra Walters: Thank you.   GT: So over the next 10 minutes, this is sort of rather, a sort of specialist type of podcast really. It’s not like our general ones we do because this one will be talking about the government's consultation on corporate transparency and register reform. They’re new proposals, and they're going to bring in really the biggest changes that have happened at Companies House since we opened our doors back in 1844. So we’ll get the ball rolling. Good morning Alex. What’s the consultation about and why are we doing it?   AW: Okay, so we've been working really closely with BEIS to publish a very wide-ranging, quite high-level public consultation about reforming the company's register. As you referred to before, the biggest potential change, if these proposals are taken forward, since 1844. What we're looking to do, is make changes to give Companies House new powers to combat economic crime and improve protection for people running businesses, whilst at the same time trying to continue to minimise administrative burdens.   It’s a high-level consultation. So rather than proposing how we might do some of this stuff at the moment, we're sort of asking, should we be doing some of these things? So it’s high-level. It's all new. And at the same time, we'll be going through an organisational transformation, looking to transform the way we work to make sure we're fit for the future in our new role.   GT: Right okay. So the consultation has been out now for a few weeks and there are 4 main areas I believe. Do you want to just talk about the areas?   AW: Yeah, sure. I mean there are a lot of proposals in the consultation, but as you say, they generally group into these sorts of themes. The first one which I think is probably one of the most interesting to the general public and some of our key stakeholders, is around knowing better who's setting up, managing and controlling companies.   So what we're proposing is that we start doing some identity verification, which is something we've never done before. What we're suggesting is that we verify identities of directors, people with significant control and those individuals filing information on behalf of a company. We’re asking whether people think we should verify identities of shareholders too.     At the same time as that, we're looking to consider whether we should collect more information on shareholders. The information we collect at the moment on shareholders is quite limited and it's quite difficult to link information and track informati

This podcast is part of a series of case studies in which we speak to small business owners. Find out about the challenges and advantages of owning your own business, and pick up some advice on how to get started. The Eco Larder is a Community Interest Company (CIC) based in the Haymarket area of Edinburgh. Opened by Matthew and Stephanie Foulds in November 2018, it's the city's first zero waste supermarket. They aim to put planet and purpose before profits. Read the full case study here - www.gov.uk/government/case-stu…/the-eco-larder-cic   Transcript   Companies House host: Hello and welcome to our latest podcast. We're here with the Eco Larder Community Interest Company in Edinburgh and welcome to Matthew and Stephanie and baby Jasmina. How are you guys?    Matthew: Very well. Thank you.   Stephanie: Yeah, really good.    CH: Thank you for welcoming us here today to talk to you about your company. So if we get straight into it, why did you start the Eco Larder and what inspired you?   M: So we started the Eco Larder well, it was an idea that had been with us while Stephanie was pregnant with Jasmina and we became increasingly aware of the additional waste we were going through preparing for a little baby and just how much it was going to take to try and live without plastic for her and we just decided at that point that we were going to make a stand, we're going to do that ourselves and then that blossomed into well, there's an opportunity to do that for Edinburgh and create a zero waste supermarket.    CH: Okay, and is it just the two of you or is it kind of you and family and volunteers?   S:  Well, we have my mum as our biggest volunteer looking after Jasmina and taking care of all the details helping in the shop and then we've also got an amazing team of volunteers.    M: Yeah, we've had lots of people just willing to offer their time doing shifts, creating websites, fixing doors and sending boxes. We will always find someone, it's just been a wonderful experience.    CH: That is so nice and I guess to already feel that you've kind of got a community of people that you know are really passionate about it and want to come and support the shop and what you're trying to achieve.    M: Yeah    CH: Amazing. In terms of kind of finding your premises and stuff. Was there a reason why you chose here? You're sort of just off the Haymarket aren’t you in Edinburgh?   M: Yes, so we're nice and central here, but we also live in this area. So we wanted to be fairly close to where we live, but also it is a great spot with what we hoped would be accessible for everyone who is coming in on the trains, but also very central in Edinburgh. Lots of people live around this neck of the woods, so we’ve looked around for a little while and checked out a couple of places and then we stumbled across where we are now.    CH: Brilliant and I know you've been open since November 2018 so you're sort of a few months in now. Where did it all start? What were the first things that you kind of did in terms of, I guess setting up the business?   S: I think we just thought let's go for it. You know and one day we sat down and launched a crowdfunding campaign. It was near the end when I was heavily pregnant. We couldn't move anyway, we were stuck in the house and Matt said I'll do the crowdfunding and I did the website and we did that and thought we've got nothing to lose and it went from there.    M: Yeah, then we got the crowdfunding. We thought ‘oh crikey’ now we've got to do it and yeah, it all just kept going one thing after another.   CH: Brilliant. So that was kind of I guess the starting point. Where did you go next?   M: Yeah, and so once we started to look at actually setting up the company we came across all the other options for how we would register and the best fit by far was the the CIC because we were taking on more than just creating a business for ourselves. It was you know, really going to be a shared effort for the Edinburgh

This podcast is part of a series of case studies in which we speak to small business owners. Find out about the challenges and advantages of owning your own business, and pick up some advice on how to get started. Founded in 2008 by a small group of actors, The Bear Pit Theatre is a voluntary organisation based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. It aims to provide a venue for, and bring together, the different artistic and amateur groups in the town. Read the full case study here - www.gov.uk/government/case-stu…es/bear-pit-theatre   Transcript Jocelyn Keedwell : Hello and welcome to the latest case study podcast. I'm Jocelyn. I'm from the company's Health Communications team, and I'm here today at The Bear Pit theatre with Pamela Hicks, David Mears and David Derrington all directors. Hello all, thank you very much for letting us in. Just wondering if you can maybe tell me a little bit about The Bear Pit Theatre and how you guys started?   Pamela: David and I, we got together at the very beginning with another friend and the reason being that we feared that what is now the play house next door was going to be shut down. There was going to be nowhere for amateurs to perform in the Stratford-upon-Avon. So we set about  trying to find a venue.   David Mears: So that was in 2008. We started to have those conversations and ten years later we're here now in The Bear Pit Theatre. We felt it was really important that in a town that celebrates Shakespeare there should be a venue for local community groups and amateur theatre makers to produce work.   JK: So it was very much aimed at community groups and community theatre rather than some more established companies?    DM: Absolutely and before we started to find spaces and talk about setting up a venue we looked at lots of other community spaces. We did a tour all around London visited the Likes of Questers. We were very envious that the Talisman and The Priory theatre in Kenilworth had not one but two community-led venues. There's the Loft theatre in Lemmington and we're thinking well, hang on a minute. Why isn't there a community venue in Stratford-upon-Avon that’s in the heart of Warwickshire?    CH:So you said your first formed in 2008.  Was it yourselves was there more people involved? Is it volunteer-based kind of thing?   David Derrington: It started with sort as they said with two things in mind really. One was to try and act as a sort of an embracing group for the other companies because we were all aware that all these people did not have a voice in Stratford. I mean so many of the theatres elsewhere are commissioned, run by, helped by local authorities and that sort of thing. In Stratford you've got the RSC. What else do you want? And so that was one of the things to try and do, to try and bring all these groups together. Perhaps we’ll come back to that and the second thing was to find the theatre. That's sort of where we were.    CH: So the actual theatre is based at the back of the United Reformed Church here in Stratford. So how did you find that space?   P: We were introduced to the then Minister here who, actually I think is a great thespian. He couldn't wait to have this space filled with actors and so he showed us around and said well,  ‘’I'm happy that you get the opportunity to perform here”, at that time the church hall was being used for badminton and yoga and line dancing and goodness knows what, but he sort of allocated us long weekends, so that we can put on the shows.    CH: So how did you transition then from being a long weekend space to being sort of a fully functioning theatre that you've developed and you've refurbished and you put a lot of time and effort into?   DM: It became quite clear that we couldn't continue as we were doing because it was a lot of time to set it all up. We'd be building a rake for our audience to sit on, we'd be building a set and then we'd have to clear it in a matter of hours so badminton could play the following