UK licences, registrations and schemes

Incorporating a company gives it legal existence. It does not give it permission to do anything in particular. Depending on what the UK operation does, there may be a licence, a registration or a scheme it has to be in before it starts, and the penalties for trading without one range from a fine to the trade being unlawful.

The registrations almost every company needs

• ICO registration and the annual data protection fee, for almost any company holding personal data, which includes having employees. Covered in full on the data protection page.
• An EORI number before goods can be imported or exported, and a customs arrangement to go with it.
• The Construction Industry Scheme where the company pays subcontractors for construction work, which catches more groups than expected, including some only fitting out an office.

The ones that depend on the activity

• Regulated activities. Financial services, consumer credit, insurance distribution and claims management all require authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority. This is a long process with a real failure rate, and it should be scoped before the UK plan is fixed rather than after.
• Alcohol, food and premises. Premises licences, personal licences and food business registration with the local authority, which is a registration rather than an approval but has to happen before trading.
• Waste, packaging and producer responsibility. If the company puts packaging on the UK market, sells electrical goods or batteries, or produces waste, there are producer responsibility obligations with reporting and fees attached. Ecommerce groups are often in scope and unaware.
• Product marking. Goods placed on the UK market may need UKCA or UKNI marking, which is a separate exercise from the equivalent elsewhere.
• Sponsorship. A licence from the Home Office before the company can employ anyone who does not already have the right to work here.
• Sector-specific licensing in areas such as healthcare, gambling, security, transport, waste carriage and recruitment.

What we do

We start from what the UK company will do rather than from a checklist, because the list above is long and almost none of it will apply to you. We identify what is required, make the registrations that are ours to make, and bring in a specialist where the application is a discipline of its own, which authorisation by the Financial Conduct Authority and immigration sponsorship both are. Renewals and reporting dates then sit in the same deadline system as everything else, because a licence that lapses is worse than one never obtained.