Registered office, service address, and business address – what’s the difference?

When registering your limited company you will need to choose your registered office and a service address, as they are both legal requirements of company formation. However a ‘business address’ is optional and therefore not required.

Confusion mainly arises with the term ‘business address’, because many people use it interchangeably with the term ‘registered office’. However, this is technically imprecise as they can have completely different meanings in different contexts.

Here are definitions of each address type as provided by -  https://www.qualitycompanyformations.co.uk/

Registered office address

This is the legal correspondence address of a company, required by Companies House and disclosed on the public register of companies. Official government mail will be received there. A company may or may not be based at this address, but it must be in the same UK country (legal jurisdiction) where the company is registered.

Service address

This is the legal correspondence address of a company director, secretary, subscriber (a shareholder or guarantor who joins a company during its incorporation and subscribes to the memorandum of association), Person with Significant Control (PSC), or an LLP member.

A director’s official government mail will be received there. It is required by Companies House and will be disclosed on the public record, but it can be located anywhere in the world.

Business address

This is usually where a company is based and/or where the business chooses to receive non-statutory mail from clients and customers, suppliers, banks, etc. It does not have to be provided to Companies House and will not be disclosed on the public record unless it is also the registered office or service address. It can be anywhere in the world.