Many organisations add disclaimers and confidentiality notices to the end of their company email, by adding them to the “Signature” on the email. This ensures that they are added automatically and everyone uses the same corporate message. The disclaimer and the confidentiality notice are intended to serve different purposes, and ideally should kept separate.
What a lot of companies seem to be unaware of is that certain information is required by law to appear at the bottom of any company email if it is from any form of Limited Company or Limited Liability Partnership.
Mandatory Information
If a business is a Private or Public Limited Company (LTD or PLC) or a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), the Companies Act 1985 requires that all of your business emails, letterhead and order forms must include the following details in legible characters:
- The company’s registered name (e.g. ABC Ltd)
- The company registration number
- The place of registration (e.g. Scotland or England & Wales)
- The registered office address
This information should also appear on your company’s website. Failure to comply with these requirements could make you liable for a fine of up to £1,000.
This duty has existed for business letters for many years and a lot of people were of the opinion that it did not extend to email communication. Any doubt was removed by an amendment to the Companies Act 1985 that took effect on 1st January 2007. The duty is now contained in the Companies (Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2008, which came into force on 1st October 2008.
It is not enough to provide a link to this information on the email footer. The Regulations provide that any ‘display’ or disclosure of information required by the Regulations must be “in characters that can be read with the naked eye.”
Most companies will find it a lot easier to just add the information to all outgoing company email, including those messages that forward or reply to a third party’s email.
Just for clarity, these details are not required of sole traders or standard partnerships.
Enforcement of this requirement is the responsibility of Trading Standards. The maximum fine for non-compliance is currently £1,000. An additional daily fine of up to £300 per day can be imposed for any continuing breach.
An example footer:
Joe Bloggs Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 12345678. Registered office: Bloggs House, 2A Bloggs Street, London, AB1 1AA.
And no you can’t just put it in teeny weeny writing as it must be legible with the naked eye.
Applying a Signature to Outlook
The most common email client is Microsoft Outlook and it comes in slightly different flavours depending on the version of Microsoft Office you are using. Setting up an email signature is virtually the same in all versions. For instructions on how to set an email signature in outlook go here.