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Comments from ACCA
October 2005

ACCA is pleased to comment on the recent consultation letter on the future treatment of Northern Ireland in the framework of UK companies legislation. ACCA has consulted with the representatives of our members in Northern Ireland and this response reflects their views.

On the first issue presented for comment, ACCA has made submissions direct to the DTI in London on the detailed contents of the company law reform bill. There are no issues of special relevance to Northern Ireland which we would wish to raise here.

The second issue canvassed in the letter is whether we would support the proposal for Northern Ireland to be systematically included in UK-wide companies legislation, including the forthcoming bill. We, and in particular our members based in Northern Ireland, would certainly support this. The present situation, whereby GB legislation is routinely transposed into NI-specific statutes in identical terms but on a time table which is unpredictable, is, in our view, unhelpful to both companies and their advisers.

If there were some standard time-table by which NI-equivalent legislation were enacted and brought into force, that might perhaps rationalise the current situation. But this is not the case at the moment. Northern Ireland companies and their advisers are often in the dark as to when GB legislation will be brought into force, if at all, and the means available to them to keep informed as to when new rules are to come into force are more limited than the means available to practitioners in the rest of the UK. Recent changes which have caused particular practical difficulties include the extension to Northern Ireland of the legislation on limited liability partnerships and the increase in the small company audit exemption threshold.

If Northern Ireland was incorporated into UK-wide companies legislation, locally-based companies and their advisers would be much better able to plan for the application of new legal rules. Certainty in such matters is, as you will appreciate, very important for business planning. Practitioners would also benefit substantially from the proposal in the sense that they would be in a position to give more accurate advice to their clients on the content and implementation of new company law rules.

Another practical benefit of the proposal would be that companies and advisers would be able to make use of GB-focused company law manuals and other materials which are currently of limited use to those based in Northern Ireland because of the twin problems of delayed application and different statutory references.

To reiterate then, ACCA would support the incorporation of Northern Ireland into UK companies legislation.  

We acknowledge the comment made in your letter that the returned Northern Ireland Assembly could decide to resume responsibility for issuing separate NI legislation. We think that would be a regrettable, backward step but accept that this is ultimately a constitutional issue. 

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