UK: the Companies House annual report, new companies and company secretary appointments

Companies House has published its 2009/10 annual report: see here (pdf). This contains the expected operational information and financial statements as well as some interesting statistics. For example, 362,317 new companies were incorporated in the year to 31 March 2010 and of these 229,147 (or 63.2%) opted not to appoint a company secretary. To put this another way: a company secretary was appointed in 36.8% of new incorporations although companies legislation no longer requires such an appointment by private companies.