The register
you need is notCompanies House.

Because of what it does rather than what it calls itself. The money laundering regulations define a trust or company service provider by activity: forming companies, firms or other legal persons for other people; providing a registered office, business address or correspondence address for a company; acting, or arranging for someone else to act, as a director, secretary or partner; and acting, or arranging for someone to act, as a nominee shareholder. Carrying on any of those by way of business requires registration with HMRC for anti-money-laundering supervision, and doing it without registration is an offence. The confusion is understandable: people reason that they are a registered company, so they are registered. Those are two unrelated registers.

HMRC publishes a list of the businesses it supervises for anti-money-laundering purposes, and it can be searched. It is worth doing before handing over company formation work or taking a registered office service from someone, for a reason beyond compliance: an unsupervised provider in that space has either not looked into its obligations or has decided to ignore them, and neither says anything encouraging about how it will handle your records. Ask for the registration reference and check it rather than accepting a reassurance.

No, and this is the hardest line in the work. Providing immigration advice or immigration services in the course of a business is a criminal offence under Part V of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 unless you are a qualified person — regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority, which was formerly the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner, or a solicitor, barrister or legal executive regulated by a designated professional body. Two details catch people out. The offence does not depend on charging: free help given in the course of a business is caught. And completing an application form on somebody's behalf is providing an immigration service, not administrative assistance. We will decline and tell you where to look.

That is different, and it is worth separating the two clearly. An employer carrying out right to work checks on its own employees is discharging its own duty, not giving immigration advice, and there is nothing to stop us helping you keep those records in order as part of your own administration. What we cannot do is advise an individual about their own immigration position, or about what a check means for their status, or complete anything on their behalf. If a conversation starts drifting that way, we will stop it and say why.

No. Receiving, holding, transmitting or paying out money belonging to a client can amount to providing a payment service, which requires authorisation or registration by the Financial Conduct Authority. Rather than operate near that line, we work the other way round: payments stay with you, accounts stay in your name, and we prepare, schedule and reconcile rather than hold. It is a little less convenient in week one and removes a whole category of problem for everybody.

Because the alternative is a client asking for something, getting a vague yes, and both parties finding out later. A description like business support tells a buyer nothing about permissions, so the only informative thing a provider can publish is the boundary. It also saves time: somebody who needs a company formed, a registered office, immigration advice or a payment service can see in ten seconds that this is the wrong door, rather than after two phone calls.