Part 1: Companies House Reform Inspection etc of the register Section 91: Protecting information on the register
This section amends sections 790ZF and 1087 of the Companies Act 2006, and substitutes section 1088, which is a power to make secondary legislation providing for the protection of registered material.
	This section extends the instances where individuals can apply to have their personal information on the register "suppressed" or "protected" from the public register, i.e. so that the information is no longer displayed publicly, or disclosed by the Registrar except in specified circumstances. This doesn’t exempt them from providing the information to the Registrar, where that is still required by legislation, but means that once delivered the information will not longer be displayed on the public register.
	This section makes amendments to the sections of the Companies Act 2006 which allow applications for personal information to be "suppressed" or "protected" and which require this information to made unavailable for public inspection – section 1087, section 1088, section 790ZF and section 790ZG.
	Section 91(2) omits subsection (3) from section 790ZF (protection of information as to usual residential address of PSCs). Subsection (3) of section 790ZF states that subsection (1) of section 790ZF does not apply to information relating to a person if an application under regulations made under section 790ZG has been granted with respect to that information and not been revoked. This is omitted so that provisions which restrict the use and disclosure of information under sections 240-244 can apply to information protected under section 790ZG.
	Section 91(3) makes amendments to section 1087 (material not available for public inspection):
In subsection (1) of section 1087, paragraph (e) is substituted, so that any application or other document delivered to the Registrar under regulations under new section 1088 is not made available for public inspection, other than "replacement" information (see new section 1088(5)). New paragraph (e) also requires that any information which regulations made under new section 1088 require not to be made available for public inspection, are not. An example of "replacement" information is where someone has changed name, and wants their new name to appear on the public register in place of their old name, for example, in cases of domestic abuse.
Subsection (2) of section 1087 is substituted with a new subsection (2) which is more prescriptive. New subsection (2) states that where subsection (1), or a provision referred to in subsection (1), imposes a restriction by reference to material deriving from a particular description of document (or part of document), that doesn’t affect the availability for public inspection of the same information in material derived from another description (or part of a document) in relation to which no restriction applies. This means that if an address is protected in one document, such that it is not made available for public inspection, it doesn’t mean it cannot be made available for public inspection if contained in a different document.
	Section 91(4) substitutes section 1088 (Application to Registrar to make address unavailable for public inspection) for new section 1088 (Power to make regulations protecting material). Section 1088 allowed only for addresses to be suppressed from the public register, whereas the substituted section 1088 allows the Secretary of State to make regulations making provision to protect addresses, as well as additional categories of personal information, such as business occupations, signatures, the day of dates of birth, addresses and names. The substituted section 1088 is modelled on existing section 1088 and existing section 790ZG.
	Regulations under substituted section 1088 may make provision requiring the Registrar to protect information with or without an application. Regulations may require the Registrar to protect information in all cases – i.e., without an application – if new information were later required which would not normally be made available for public inspection, such as an individual’s email address. Regulations may also confer a discretion on the Registrar.
	Subsections (6), (8) and (7) of new section 1088 relate to the disclosure of information protected under new section 1088. Subsection (6) states that one of the circumstances the regulations will specify, which allow the Registrar to disclose protected information, will include where the court has made an order. Subsection (7) states that regulations will not prevent disclosure under sections 243 or 244 (residential address information), new section 1087C(1)(date of birth information), any provisions under section 1046 which relates to these two sections, or new section 1110F (general powers of disclosure by the Registrar), as inserted by section 94.