This is now replaced by our automatically-updating list of PLCs with late accounts.
Brewdog plc is six weeks late filing its accounts with Companies House:
How unusual is this?
On 1 August 2024, there were 4,430 active public limited companies. Ignoring those that appear completely defunct1Meaning filing deadlines before 1 January 2023, there were 132 that hadn’t filed on time by 1 August.
Companies House’s penalties for late filing are pretty hefty for a small business, but utterly irrelevant for a large company:
It would make sense to make the fine geared to the size of the company, e.g. with the maximum fine becoming the greater of £7,500 and 0.1% of net assets (about £150k in Brewdog’s case).
The complete list is here. Note that some of these may have filed a few days before the deadline, but Companies House hadn’t yet processed the accounts.2That’s a particular problem for companies who file paper accounts; for some large companies this is unavoidable, because Companies House’s systems won’t accept their accounts in electronic form. Brewdog’s very pretty accounts get printed out, sent to Companies House, scanned, and end up ugly and unsearchable (which is bad for accessibility as well as open data). I expect that is a consequence of Companies House’s limitations and not Brewdog’s fault.
Many thanks to M for the idea and the coding – indeed everything.
Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash
- 1Meaning filing deadlines before 1 January 2023
- 2That’s a particular problem for companies who file paper accounts; for some large companies this is unavoidable, because Companies House’s systems won’t accept their accounts in electronic form. Brewdog’s very pretty accounts get printed out, sent to Companies House, scanned, and end up ugly and unsearchable (which is bad for accessibility as well as open data). I expect that is a consequence of Companies House’s limitations and not Brewdog’s fault.