For small business owners the high cost of property in London means businesses are left in a quandary over desiring that coveted London address and phone number versus creating a thriving and successful business. With the rising costs combined with the increased cost of maintaining a building, it seems that virtual office solutions are due to enter their prime.

Many businesses are discovering that a virtual office in London is providing freedom from financial pressure as well as an increase in revenue. Instead of fighting through the blazing heat of the property market, businesses are able to function from a variety of locations throughout the country while still getting a hold of that coveted London address and phone number. What’s better is that virtual office solutions offer more than just an address. Mail address forwarding and bespoke telephone answering services relieve financial stress and help your business to function better. Virtual offices also provide services for teleconferencing meeting room hires to allow you to meet in London as and when required.

As the commercial market continues to increase in price business owners are no longer taking to the mercy of high property costs and instead looking at virtual offices as a quick and cheaper solution to opening in multiple locations and at a cheap price, Virtual offices are putting business solutions back in the hands of businessmen making virtual office hire affordable solutions for businesses including mail forwarding, phone answering services, fax to email services and more.

CRC Essex carrying on a mail forwarding business and is required to keep a record of : 

a) the full name, address and telephone number of all persons for whom post is received or who has requested postal packets received to be held or forwarded to them

b)  the nature of the business (if any) carried out by that person

c)  any instructions as to the delivery or forwarding of postal packets

d) the name and address of person(s) to whom postal packets are to be forwarded, if different from a) above

e) copies of originals of two documents of a type approved by the council for the purposes of identifying the person and verifying the address(es) required in a) above.

A client’s name and address in a) above must not be the name and address of another mail forwarding business. 

The name and address to be kept in a) above must be 

a) in the case of an individual, his private address

b) in the case of a body corporate or partnership  (note, a body corporate includes a limited company)

1) the registered office address or the principal address of the partnership; and

2) the names and private addresses of the directors or partners or another person directly or indirectly responsible for the management of the body corporate or partnership; and

3) the address of the principal place of business of the body corporate or partnership if different from any of the addresses mentioned in 1) and 2) above.

This will mean that apart from where a client is a sole individual, a contract with a mail forwarding business will require more than one name and address to be held by a mail forwarding business. 

Retention and Inspection of Records 

A mail forwarding business is required to keep records of clients for at least a year after the end of an arrangement (or contract) to hold or forward on postal packets and to keep them available for inspection by the police or any authorised officer at all reasonable times.

Offences 

It is a criminal offence for a person to:

• fail to comply with the provisions of section 75 or;

• furnish false information –

• in making an application for registration or notifying the Council of any alteration to the registration particulars held or

• to a mail forwarding business in relation to particulars the business is  required to keep;

• make a false entry in records kept by a person carrying on a mail forwarding business.

It should be noted from the above, that a client will commit an offence if they provide required information that is false. 

In relation to the investigation of an offence,Trading Standards Officers have the power to enter premises and inspect and seize goods and documents.  

Penalties  

The maximum penalty for committing an offence is a fine not exceeding £5000 on summary conviction.

Transition Period 

The legislation allows a period of four weeks from the date of coming into force before the requirements to register and keep records apply to a business.

The legislation comes into force on 7 January 2008, therefore the requirements to register and keep records are effective from 4 February 2008.

If an application has been made for registration during the four week period then the business may lawfully continue to carry on the business and need not comply with the requirement to keep records until the Council issues a certificate of registration.

 Guidance and Information for How we run our Virtual Office Business. 

New provisions controlling mail forwarding businesses are contained in section 75 of the London Local Authorities Act 2007 and come into force in Westminster on 7 January 2008.  Although CRC Essex is EXEMPT to the  London Local Authorities Act 2007 as it is based in Essex so is not bound by Westminster rules and regulations, we do however run our business to run in line with the rules and regulations.

A mail forwarding business is carried on in Westminster, if the postal address that is made available and to which postal packets may be sent, is in the area of Westminster.

‘Mail forwarding business’ is defined in section 75 of the Act as, “the business, carried out for reward, of making available to a person a postal address to which postal packets may be sent, and doing either or both of the following -

a) holding postal packets so sent for collection by that person or his agent;

b) forwarding, by whatever means, postal packets so sent to that person.”

Requirement to Register with the Council 

A person is not permitted to carry on a mail forwarding business in Westminster without being registered with the Council. 

This applies whether the mail forwarding business is carried on alone or in conjunction with any other business.

An application in writing to the Council for registration is required to be made giving details of the name and address of the applicant and the address of each place in the borough occupied by the applicant for the purposes of the business.

 Should the name and address of the applicant or the address of each place of business change after registration then it is a requirement to notify the council within 14 days of the change to enable the council to amend the registered details. 

The CRC Essex require copies to be kept of the originals of two documents of a type approved by CRC Essex for the purposes of identifying a person and verifying their address.

Types of documents approved by Westminster Council and CRC Essex are listed below.

In order to identify a person one document should be taken from the photo identification in list 1 and to verify their address, a second document from list 2.

In the case of a body corporate (limited company) the certificate of incorporation will be considered as verifying the name of the body corporate. A second document should be taken from list 2 to verify the registered office address.

 CRC Essex work towards the City of Westminster requirements and standards when opening a mail forwarding address. The Documents Approved are the same as scheduled by the City of Westminster for Identification Purposes

CRC Essex require two documents, one from each list.

1. Photo identification – Proof of identity 

• Passport

• Driving Licence (with photocard)

• National Identity Card

• HM Forces Identity Card

• A current student card

• Employment identification card

• Disabled drivers blue pass

2. Proof of address (provided both name and address is shown) 

• Gas or Electricity bill

• Telephone bill

• Water bill

• Mortgage Statement

• Council Tax bill

• Bank / Building Society statement (includes credit card/ store card bill)

• TV licence

• Valid insurance certificate

• Pay slip

• P45/P60 statement

• Financial statement (e.g. pension, endowment)

• Current benefit book

• Letter from Benefits Agency

• HM Revenue and Customs Notice of Coding

• Student hall of residence agreement or other proof of accommodation

Please Note- 

In order to ensure a copy of a document is that of the original, it is strongly recommended that the copy is taken by yourself from the original document. Alternatively you may wish to ask for a certified copy of an original document. It is recommended that a certified copy of a document is certified by a professional person. It is up to you to take steps to satisfy yourself that the copy you hold is that of the original

This guidance document has been prepared by Westminster Community Protection Department for the assistance of businesses in Westminster.

It is not an authoritative interpretation of the law and is intended for guidance purposes only. 

But then you think of the cost of starting your own business – the cost of office space, IT infrastructure, staff, and realise you just can’t afford it.

Or can you?

Running a business from home is nothing new. But technology such as the internet and cloud computing is increasingly providing easily-shared lower-cost software options for start-up firms. Cheap internet telephony services let you stay in touch with people half a world away.

Friends Jamie Waldegrave and Chris Huey met at university in Durham before taking jobs in the financial services industry.

In October they quit their jobs and decided to start their own business. TipToken is a group-buying website, and has been live for just three months.

So far uptake has been promising, says Mr Waldegrave.

“We’ve been really pleased with the response,” he says.

“It takes time to grow, but the numbers are moving in the right direction, we’re getting more and more traffic to the site and more sales, which is really nice.”

The partners are the only full-time employees of the company. For any other work that needs to be done they use remote freelancers thousands of miles away, as they don’t need full-time staff.

The business is web-based. Skype lets them talk to their developers and designers in India, and for all other IT needs they rely on cloud-based services accessible from anywhere, so they can share data with staff based anywhere in the world.

The self-funded operation started on a shoestring budget, and Mr Waldegrave says working as a virtual company is the only reason they exist.

“The cost of taking on in-house design staff and development, or keeping a local company on retainer would be impossible,” he says.

“We don’t have to upgrade to bigger offices, and we don’t have to worry about employment law. That would have slowed us down a lot. We can do things quicker and faster.”

Taken on trust

Mr Waldegrave says that building a relationship with remote workers you can trust is vital.

“The ones we started out with, they were no good, didn’t get the work done and it was a real problem. We had to go through the process of getting the deposit we’d paid back and that took a lot of time.”

“We do a lot of research on someone before we take them on, and try not to have too many different people.”

One of the ways TipToken tries to minimise problems is by using sites such as PeoplePerHour.com, an online marketplace for remote workers.

The company says they’ve seen a growth in registered users from 50,000 to 136,000 across 150 countries on the back of the virtual business trend.

Chief executive Xenios Thrasyvoulou says the company focuses on providing talent, rather than outsourcing menial tasks.

“They’re no less talented than those who are part of your core. It’s just that you don’t need an SEO [search engine optimisation] person fulltime, and you can’t afford it.

“But you want someone to be on your instant messenger, to be able to call on a Saturday and get an answer, in the same way as an employee anywhere in the world.”

So how far can you take the virtual company? Mr Thrasyvoulou thinks there are limits.

“It’s a fallacy that you can be 100% virtual, it gets to the point where it gets quite draining on the one person that’s the owner. You need a core to grow with.”

Lingo24′s operations director Jack Waley-Cohen agrees. The translation company started as a virtual company. They now have 130 staff spread over four continents.

“Before we got our first office location I was convinced we could carry on being pretty virtual, but I genuinely think there comes a point where you do need people together. Not necessarily all the time, but some of the time.”

Mr Waley-Cohen says what they have is a “hybrid” situation – a core physical presence in small offices, with the majority of staff working remotely. He thinks that starting virtually had huge benefits.

“Working virtually in the beginning meant that we’ve just worked a bit more intelligently,” he says.

“We’ve developed all our systems to give us flexibility you won’t have in an office. And as a growing business cost is a major consideration. Even if you have a small team in an office it adds to the overheads.”

The company uses a lot of free or publicly available IT tools, including Skype, Google Apps for business, Dropbox and Yammer.

Alone in a crowd

There are disadvantages. Having staff working in isolation, even with a wealth of modern connectivity tools, creates its own problems.

Mr Waley-Cohen says keeping everyone in the loop can be difficult – the company now uses a daily newsletter to keep staff connected.

Textappeal is another company working to a hybrid virtual model.

Founded originally in Paris, the company does transcreation – translation for the advertising and marketing industries. This requires more than just straight language skills, it’s about ensuring that advertising and branding translates culturally.

Clients have included a worldwide hotel group. When this hotel firm translated its slogan into Chinese characters, they found later it also meant pig’s tail, leading them to engage Textappeal’s services.

They now work in 151 markets with global brands such as Nikon, Swarovski, and Nokia’s luxury mobile brand Vertu.

Co-founder Elliot Polak says their remote workers can feel isolated at times.

“The idea that everyone can work from their home is a nice idea, but most people want to be with other people – it’s more stimulating and they come up with better ideas.”

The company says it values its remote workers and works hard to help them feel like part of the team, flying their top people in to head office to spend time with each other and the team.

In the 12 years Mr Polak has been in business he has seen a seismic shift in the technology available.

“It’s hard to believe we were using fax machines. We could fax each other and find people in different markets who could do these things.

“Over the last two years people have realised that you don’t really need offices – you just need talented people and thanks to technology you can connect people up.”

Using talented people who have been through a rigorous testing process, but who are local to the countries the brands are breaking into, gives Textappeal the edge, Mr Polak believes.

Pyjama party

For the budding virtual business owner it doesn’t have to stop there. If you’d rather your new venture had a more prestigious address than your bedroom, there are companies that can provide you with a postal address and redirection service, telephone answering service, and even meeting rooms when you’re in town.

Executive Offices is one of those companies, and their chief executive officer is John Drover. The company has seen huge growth in virtual businesses using their services.

“It allows people working form home to punch above their weight. It’s great to work from home but 18 Acacia Avenue doesn’t have quite the ring of 23 Berkeley Square.”

And if you want to be truly virtual, or just take a meeting while still in your pyjamas, you could join those using the services of virtual world Second Life.

Adam Nelson, executive director at Linden Labs, the company behind Second Life, says that hundreds of companies use Second Life to arrange meetings, conferences with remote workers, training, 3D rapid prototyping, and more.

“Businesses can purchase their own virtual spaces, and build or buy the 3D content and applications that suit their specific needs,” Mr Nelson says.

“Many choose to work with a company in our Solution Provider program, qualified experts in creating content and experiences in Second Life.

“Alternately, businesses can choose to use facilities in Second Life provided by third parties – for example, there are several full-service conferencing facilities available.”

IBM has held a global conference in Second Life, Northrop Grumman used it for training people to use a bomb disposal robot, and the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago used it for a disaster preparedness simulation.

Virtually there

This is just the beginning, according to Milind Govekar of technology analysts Gartner.

“For years we’ve been talking about globalisation but we didn’t really have the tools to manage that. Now we do.”

He says the driver behind the acceleration in uptake over the last few years is undoubtedly cloud computing.

“If I’ve got an idea and I want to do something, it’s cheap as chips, as well as the agility it gives me in terms of trying it out.”

“It’s a generational thing as well. The next generation coming to work are very comfortable with virtual entities, they are digital natives, they’ve grown up with computers.”