Commentary Chapter 8: Directors’ Residential Addresses: Protection from Disclosure
446.Under the 1985 Act (and previous Companies Acts), the usual residential address of every director must be entered on the public record held by:
	the registrar; and
	each company of which he is a director in its register of directors.
Access to the public record held by the registrar is made in a variety of ways, including daily bulk downloading by some subscribers. There is also a public right to inspect companies’ registers of directors.
447.There is an exception for directors at serious risk of violence or intimidation, e.g. from political activists and terrorists. Under sections 723B – 723E of the 1985 Act, introduced by the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, they may apply for a “confidentiality order”. A director with a confidentiality order provides a single service address in addition to his usual residential address. The service address is entered on the public record; the usual residential address is kept on a secure register to which access is restricted to specified enforcement authorities. The historic record is not affected by the confidentiality order. By October 2006, nearly 11,000 Confidentiality Orders had been issued of which, it is estimated that nearly 7,000 were to directors (certain other individuals, eg partners in Limited Liability Partnerships, are also eligible).
448.The CLR considered it essential that directors’ residential addresses be filed with the central register, so that enforcement and regulatory bodies as well as liquidators and, in some circumstances, creditors and shareholders can discover the individual’s residential address. However they were concerned that unrestricted public access to directors’ residential addresses had been abused. They considered that there should not be any discretion as to whether particular addresses should or should not be placed on the public record. Therefore, while welcoming the introduction of the confidentiality order regime, they recommended all directors be given the option of:
	either, as now, providing their residential address for the public record;
	or, providing both a service address and their residential address, with the service address being on the public record and the residential address being on a separate secure register to which access would be restricted. Access to the restricted register would be available to certain public authorities. Other parties, such as members and creditors, should have a right to apply to the court for access to a director’s residential address. (Final Report, paragraph 11.46)
449.This Chapter of the Act, together with the provisions on the register of directors’ residential addresses in Chapter 1 of this Part, is based on this recommendation. These provisions, which are all new, replace the confidentiality order regime.