DC’s school’s accounts overdue at Companies House

[Pioety]

Only by a couple of days but should I be worried?

I haven’t noticed any other issues that would indicate problems, the numbers on roll are steady (actually slowly increasing I think), etc, and their owner has a few schools.

I do tend to over worry about things, so it may be nothing.

It's not unusual, and a couple of days is neither here nor there.

Thanks, I think that reading about schools going under, in the media and on here, is making me more concerned than I would maybe otherwise be.

As a business owner who has to file accounts - no it doesn’t mean anything sinister. Mine were late as I switched accountants this year and the old accountant dragged his feet about giving some necessary info to the new accountant, so we ended up asking for an extension, which is fine. It can be for any number of reasons, and a school business is a million times more complex than mine!

Also many are awaiting VAT numbers as govt bodged it all.

The penalty for late filing is only £150 for the first month. It's nowhere near enough to make late filing significant. There have been calls to increase the penalties to make businesses pay more regard to the deadlines, see for example (look down the article for some of the excuses HMRC have been given):
https://www.cityam.com/the-law-should-change-brewdog-under-fire-from-top-tax-lawyer-over-late-accounts/

The observation in the article is right, properly run businesses file on time. But there are valid reasons why very occasionally things might slip.

The accounts might be received by CH but not yet showing as filed online.

Though, if I'm being honest, if there are going concern issues and for example an emphasis of matter paragraph in the audit report that refers to these going concern issues often the accounts are filed as close as possible to the deadline to delay the public reading them for as long as possible.

That said, that still doesn't indicate that the school is about to "go under" just that there's doubt around areas. In this current climate that isn't unusual or completely unexpected for many private schools that may be struggling.

@DogInATent - thanks. I can’t see that they’ve ever been late before and it looks like they filed on time for their other school near to us a few months ago, so hopefully there is a valid reason and I am worrying about nothing.

It's poor financial management.

Yes it's a cause for concern.

I've filed accounts before and it's taken about 3 weeks for Companies House to upload them onto the system. They didn't appear until mid January.

They may be checking carefully how capital expenditure is recorded as an ability to reclaim VAT on past costs would well outweigh the £150 fine.