What are the mandatory legal requirements for an email footer in the UK?

If your business operates as  a limited company (Ltd), legally you are required to include the following in your business emails:

• Company name (as it appears on the company’s certificate of incorporation, so beware of any symbols and/or punctuation);
• Company registration number;
• Your place of registration (England & Wales or Scotland);
• Your registered office address.
• There is also an obligation to ensure the characters used can be read with the naked eye.  Links to a website with the information or small print will not comply.
• The information must also be included in the legally required information in any email auto-responders.

This duty is contained in the Companies (Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2008. Categorisation of a communication depends not on its format but on its content so that an email can be categorised as a business letter.   For this reason, and because you may be exposed to a fine for non-compliance, it is safest to ensure that the information is included in an email.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 18th, 2013 at 9:56 am and is filed under DPM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.