While Companies House makes moves to increase transparency about
beneficial ownership of companies, it is also considering
deleting vast amounts of public records concerning dissolved
companies.
At present, details of dissolved companies are retained by
Companies House – and remain available to the public –
for 20 years. In response to an increasing number of
"right to be forgotten" requests made to
Companies House following the decision in Google Spain, it has
proposed reducing this period to six years. The Data Protection Act
does not specify how long information should be kept for, just that
information "shall not be kept for longer than is
necessary".
It is not particularly difficult to set up a company in the UK
and there are a number of criticisms of the level of checks which
are done before someone becomes a director. Companies House
contains a significant amount of information about companies, their
activities and their directors including addresses,
