If you’re completing a company formation with us, you may have noticed that you can’t change the ‘Jurisdiction’ of your company. In this blog post we’re going to explain why this is.
Key takeaways
- Companies cannot change their jurisdiction after formation, as it’s tied to their registered office location.
- The jurisdiction dropdown is locked for certain packages to ensure compliance with registered office address requirements.
- Always verify jurisdiction matches your registered office address during company formation to avoid application rejection.
What is the jurisdiction?
The jurisdiction is informed by the location of a company’s registered office address.
There are four possible jurisdiction options for a UK limited company:
- England & Wales
- Wales
- Scotland
- Northern Ireland
The jurisdiction of a company defines who is registering the company (this is always Companies House but the branch differs) and the laws and regulations a company will be subject to.
Once a company has been formed, the jurisdiction is locked in. This means that whilst a company can change its registered office, it can’t move its registered office between jurisdictions.
| Location of registered office | Jurisdiction | Location of Companies House |
| England | England & Wales | Cardiff |
| Wales | England & Wales or Wales | Cardiff |
| Scotland | Scotland | Edinburgh |
| Northern Ireland | Northern Ireland | Belfast |
Changing the jurisdiction during the company formation
The ‘Particulars’ section of the company formation process has a dropdown menu dedicated to ‘Jurisdiction’.
If you are forming your company with our Digital Package you will be able to choose between the four jurisdictions.
If you submit your application with a jurisdiction that doesn’t match your registered office location, your incorporation request will be rejected (if you pick up our Pre-Submission Review, our team of experts will spot and correct this error).
However, if you are forming via our Privacy or All Inclusive packages, the dropdown will be locked with the England & Wales option pre-selected.
This is for a very simple reason. All of these packages include our Registered Office Address Service. Therefore the system knows that you will be using our address, based in England, as the registered office – so the option to change the jurisdiction is removed.
And that’s why you may not be able to change the jurisdiction during the company formation.
Thanks for reading. We hope you have found this blog post helpful. If you have any questions, please do leave a comment and we’ll be happy to help.
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