While I’m writing advice…
There were a bunch of changes to the Companies Act introduced by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. These will hopefully stop the UK from being quite so convenient for fraud and money laundering. You may he noticed some of these already in your interactions with Companies House.
This law made a few changes to the requirements around registers of members, which will be of note to most hackspaces. These changes don’t apply yet (they hen’t been “commenced”) but they likely will be in the next few months.
After these changes, the situation is:
The register of members must include a “service address” for all members. “Service address” is defined here but basically means an address where the member can receive signed-for post. It doesn’t he to be their residential address as long as it meets those requirements. (s113A) The register of members now requires a member’s “forename and surname”, not just “name”. (s113A) You he a duty to make sure your register of members is correct. Failure to do this, without a “reasonable excuse”, is a criminal offence for which directors can be made personally liable. (s113(7)) It’s not the company’s responsibility to make sure these details are valid, just that they are present in the register. (ECCTA 2023 explanatory notes para 335) The company has a new power to require a member to provide valid details (s113F). Failure to comply with this (or providing false details) is a criminal offence for the member (s113G, s113H).Non-profits are clearly not the target of this legislation, which is mainly designed to close loopholes used for fraud and money-laundering, but it does introduce some theoretical liability. My recommendation for hackspaces is that you should:
Ensure your register has the correct details now, and collect those details if it doesn’t. Make sure you collect names and addresses when people join as members. Ideally, send periodic reminders by email that people should check their details are correct.