Articles

Legislation for companies to update websites and email footers

07 March 2007 The Good Web Company/Out Law

Companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their websites and in their email footers or they will breach the Companies Act and risk a fine.

Every company should list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985. The information, which must be in legible characters, should also appear on order forms and in emails. Such information is already required on 'business letters' but the duty is being extended to websites, order forms and electronic documents.

The change is being made by a Statutory Instrument that is expected to be passed on Thursday to implement a European law, the First Company Law Amendment Directive, into UK law. According to a Department of Trade and Industry spokesperson, the law will take effect on 1st January, one day later than the Directive requires. (The Companies (Registrar, Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2006 has now been passed.)

The information is likely to appear in the footer of every email sent from a company, to avoid having to decide whether each email amounts to a 'business letter' or not. Many companies do this already because the term 'business letters' was thought likely to include emails even without this new clarification.

For websites, contrary to the fears of some, the specified information does not need to appear on every page. Again, many websites will already list the required information, perhaps on their 'About us' or 'Legal info' pages.

The E-commerce Regulations, passed in 2002, require that certain information is listed on a website, including, "where the service provider is registered in a trade or similar register available to the public, details of the register in which the service provider is entered and his registration number, or equivalent means of identification in that register".

That has been understood as including the company registration number and place of registration. The E-commerce Regulations also required a note of "the geographic address at which the service provider is established" – which many have taken to mean the registered office address.

However, the wording in the E-commerce Regulations is ambiguous compared to the new provisions. Further, many organisations' sites currently omit the information, perhaps making the mistake of thinking that the E-commerce Regulations do not apply to websites that do not sell online (in fact they apply to almost all websites).

Information that must be on your website: an aide memoire

The following is the minimum information that must be on any company's website (from OUT-LAW's guide, The UK's E-commerce Regulations).

• The name, geographic address and email address of the service provider. The name of the organisation with which the customer is contracting must be given. This might differ from the trading name. Any such difference should be explained – e.g. "XYZ.com is the trading name of XYZ Enterprises Limited."

It is not sufficient to include a 'contact us' form without also providing an email address and geographic address somewhere easily accessible on the site. A PO Box is unlikely to suffice as a geographic address; but a registered office address would. If the business is a company, the registered office address must be included.

• If a company, the company's registration number should be given and, under the Companies Act, the place of registration should be stated (e.g. "XYZ Enterprises Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 1234567")
• If the business is a member of a trade or professional association, membership details, including any registration number, should be provided.
• If the business has a VAT number, it should be stated – even if the website is not being used for e-commerce transactions.
• Prices on the website must be clear and unambiguous. Also, state whether prices are inclusive of tax and delivery costs.

Email notices and email footers

This guide is based on UK law and was last updated in February 2007.

Disclaimers and confidentiality notices are automatic additions to the end of many organisations' email, sometimes adding half a page of text or more to the sender's message. There is no legal authority on the effectiveness of these notices in email messages; but that is not to say that they should not be used, provided care is taken in drafting them. The disclaimer and the confidentiality notice are intended to serve different purposes, and ideally should be separated.

In addition, certain information is required in the email footer of a company or Limited Liability Partnership.

Mandatory information

If your business is a private or public limited company or a Limited Liability Partnership, the Companies Act 1985 requires all of your business emails (and your letterhead and order forms) to include the following details in legible characters:

• Your company registration number;
? Your place of registration (e.g. Scotland or England & Wales); and

• Your registered office address

This information should also appear on your company's website (and for an overview of other information that is required on a website, see our guide to the UK's E-commerce Regulations). Failure to comply with these requirements puts a company at risk of a fine.

The duty has existed for business letters for many years. But some people were unsure whether this duty extended to email communication. Any doubt was removed by an amendment to the Companies Act 1985 that took effect on 1st January 2007. Not all emails will be relevant to your business but most companies will find it easier to add the information to all outgoing emails, including those messages that forward or reply to a third party's email.

For avoidance of doubt, these details are not required of sole traders or standard partnerships.

An example footer:

Green Organisation is a limited company registered in England and Wales. Registered number: 5464771. Registered office: Green House, 21 Bloom Street, London, WC1 1AA.

This example is taken from a Pinsent Masons briefing prepared for Exclaimer, a company that helps businesses to automatically add branding, signatures and disclaimers to outgoing email. All issues raised in this guide are presented in an example email in the briefing on legal requirements for email footers prepared for Exclaimer.

Email confidentiality notices

The confidentiality notice is an attempt to say that the content of the email is confidential and that it should not be read by anyone other than the intended recipient. Common sense dictates that adding this notice to the foot of the email is too late: if the notice is read at all, it will be read after the message. The email system used by your organisation may or may not facilitate the automatic posting of a confidentiality notice above the text of all messages being sent externally. If it does, this is the best practice to follow. If it does not or you consider the message unsightly, you are not breaking any rules; you are simply taking a slightly higher risk.

The following wording would be appropriate above the message text:

***** Email confidentiality notice *****

This message is private and confidential. If you have received this message in error, please notify us and remove it from your system.

Some confidentiality notices begin, "This message is intended for the addressee only". This is misguided because any person who receives the email will likely only receive it because he is an addressee, albeit the sender may misspell the intended recipient's email address.

Do not take it for granted that your confidentiality notice can be relied upon, however much care goes into its preparation. There is no legal authority on the value of these notices in email communications. When the notice is added automatically to every external communication, there is a risk that a court would consider that the venom in your warning has been diluted.

The value of the notice is that, if the disclosure of the content of an email becomes a subject of dispute, it would be possible to point a court to the existence of the confidentiality notice and argue that the recipient should have known to not disclose the contents of the message.

Such notices cost nothing to include – so it's worth having them. Just be aware that they may be thrown out as ineffective.

Email disclaimers

A disclaimer, if required, can appear beneath the message, along with contact details and any regulatory information that your organisation needs to provide (often required of regulated professions like financial services). But use disclaimers with caution.

Some businesses automatically add a disclaimer to all email. As with confidentiality notices, there are no legal authorities on email disclaimers; but there is guidance on disclaimers generally.

Following this guidance, disclaimers of the type that effectively warn a recipient not to rely on the content of the email will be ineffective. They also fail to inspire confidence in the sender, so make little commercial sense.

Many disclaimers are over-ambitious. If you go bungee jumping, you may be asked to sign a waiver of liability for your death in the event of accident; but such disclaimers do not stand up in court.

What you attempt to disclaim will depend on the nature of your business. If you think your business should add a disclaimer to all its email messages, seek legal advice on its likely effectiveness.

We cannot suggest a one-size-fits-all disclaimer.

Monitoring email

If your organisation monitors some email traffic data, your outgoing emails should say: “[Organisation name] may monitor email traffic data.”

If your organization also monitors the content of email, you should say: “[Organisation name] may monitor email traffic data and also the content of email for the purposes of [security and staff training].“

The monitoring of business email is primarily governed by the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) Regulations 2000 but it is also affected by other laws including EU rules and, in the UK, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. We have guidance available on monitoring employees' email if you wish to learn more.

Among other things, the rules require you to give correspondents notice of the monitoring you carry out, including monitoring email traffic data. You should take legal advice on any monitoring of communications that your organisation conducts.

The statements above can help your organisation to reduce the risk of a successful claim for unlawful monitoring of your organization’s email data but you should be aware that such statements have never been tested in court and therefore any monitoring will carry some degree of risk.