Reforms to Companies House are in progress, a reduced fine for a huge data breach and new guidance for machine learning principles
Today we focus on a variety of topics, including the progress in the reforms to Companies House, how the Police Service of Northern Ireland avoided a multi-million pound fine and the National Cyber Security Centre’s guidance for utilising machine learning systems.
Report on Companies House progress released
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 brought in reforms to Companies House procedures and powers with the first phase applying from 4 March 2024.
The reforms will contribute to making the information held in the company register more reliable and usable, protecting individuals and businesses from fraud and preventing the misuse of UK companies by international money laundering networks.
The Department for Business and Trade has published a progress report on the implementation and operation of the Act and will continue to do so every 12 months until 2030.
The report notes that between 4 March and 1 April 2024, Companies House had:
- Removed 4,000 inappropriate registered office addresses.
- Removed 2,100 officer addresses and 2,300 people with significant control addresses.
- Redacted 3,600 incorporation documents to remove personal data used without consent.
- Removed 1,250 documents from the register, including 800 false mortgage satisfaction findings that would previously have required a court order to remove.
- Contacted 3,800 companies that have PO Boxes as their registered office address to make them aware these were no longer legally compliant and asking for an alternative appropriate address. By 1 April 2024, the number of companies using a PO box had been reduced to 1,900.
Companies House have made further changes to the way companies are set up so that it is much harder to make anonymous filings and discourage those who try to hide company ownership through nominees or opaque corporate structures.
To read the report in full, see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/economic-crime-and-corporate-transparency-act-2023-progress-report
£750,000 fine for data breach … it could have been £5.6 million!
A spreadsheet released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in response to a freedom of information request contained personal information about all 9,483 serving PSNI officers and staff. The information which was included in a “hidden” tab in the spreadsheet was published online.
The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) found that PSNI’s internal procedures and sign-off protocols for safely disclosing information were inadequate.
The information released has created a heavy impact on the lives of many. Because of the fear of threat to life, some have had to move house, cut themselves off from family members or completely alter their daily routines. Naturally, this has caused anxiety and distress not just to those affected but also their family and friends.
The ICO have fined the PSNI a provisional amount of £750,000 for the breach. However, in arriving at this amount they applied a “public sector approach.” This allows them to ensure that public money isn’t being diverted from where it is needed. Without this approach, the ICO would have set the fine at £5.6 million!
Bearing in mind these consequences, both to people’s lives and financially, this case serves as a reminder that businesses need to ensure that they have robust measures in place to protect personal information.
New guidance issued on machine learning principles
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued guidance to help developers, engineers, decision makers and risk owners in creating and using machine learning systems.
Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence where computers find patterns in data or solve problems automatically.
To explain, imagine you’re teaching a child how to recognise different animals. Instead of telling them all the rules to identify a cat or a dog, you show them lots of pictures of cats and dogs and tell them which is which. Over time, they get better at telling cats from dogs just by looking at them.
Machine learning is like that, but for computers. Instead of giving the computer a strict set of instructions for every possible scenario, you feed it lots of examples and it learns from these. For instance, if you want a computer to recognise emails that are spam, you show it many emails that are labelled as “spam” and ‘not spam.” The computer looks at all the examples and starts figuring out the patterns. Then, when it sees a new email, it can guess whether it’s spam based on what it has learned.
In simple terms, machine learning is about teaching computers to learn from examples so they can make decisions or predictions on their own.
The pace of development in machine learning is high and NCSC are concerned that security could be left as a secondary consideration. They are encouraging that security be made part of the design from the outset and that it be a core requirement throughout the life cycle of the machine learning system.
The new guidance includes principles that can help developers, engineers, and decision makers to make informed decisions about their system. The end goal being to assure stakeholders and end users that a machine learning system is safe and secure.
To review the guidance in full, please see: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/machine-learning-principles
Reforms to leasehold properties becomes law
The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act has become law and will affect owners of freeholds for leasehold properties as well as house builders.
The new reforms mean that leaseholders no longer have to wait two years before they can buy or extend their lease. If they do extend their lease, the Act increases the standard lease extension term to 990 years for both houses and flats. Previously this was 50 years for houses and 90 years for flats. These changes are designed to allow leaseholders to have more security in their home.
Sales of new leasehold homes are now banned so that, other than in exceptional circumstances, every new house in England and Wales will be freehold from the start.
Freeholders and managing agents are now required to issue bills in a standardised format to make charges more transparent, and it will now be easier and cheaper for leaseholders to take over management of their own building.
The government also requires freeholders who manage their building themselves to belong to a redress scheme. This was already a requirement for managing agents.
For more details on the changes, please see: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/leasehold-reforms-become-law
Fisheries & Seafood Scheme reopens for applications
The Fisheries and Seafood Scheme (FaSS) has reopened for grant applications. An additional £2 million of funding has been made available to support England’s seafood sector.
The scheme is administered by Marine Management Organisation (MMO) on behalf of the Defra and is designed to help the fisheries and seafood sector in a number of ways. Health and safety of fishing crews, the value and quality of fisheries products, modifications that improve the energy efficiency of vessels, mitigating climate change, and innovations that support the longevity and diversification of the seafood sector all come within the aims of the scheme.
FaSS has award over £27 million to over 1,300 fisheries projects in England since it opened in May 2021. The additional funding provides an opportunity for further projects to receive funding over the next year.
Funding is being granted on a first come first served basis. Once all funding has been allocated, the scheme will close.
All projects funded by FaSS need to be completed by the time the scheme closes on 31 March 2025.
For more information about FaSS, eligibility and how to apply, see: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fisheries-and-seafood-scheme