As identity theft increases, there is an increase in pressure being put on Lord Mandelson’s Business Department to tighten controls over access to confidential data held by Companies House.

The Institute of Credit Managament (ICM) has called for new measures in order to present a greater level of difficulty to those looking to use the information gleaned from company registrations to place orders, arrange delivery and disappear without trace.

ICM Chairman, Larry Coltman, said “These people (the fraudsters) are clever and intelligent. The problem is getting worse but it is difficult to catch them and mount prosecutions. We want to make it more difficult for them to get the information which allows them to place large orders and leave suppliers with a heavy loss.”

Currently, Companies House operates a system whereby when company data is changed or altered it must be registered online but ICM said that the safeguards do not provide protection in cases where a director is impersonated by a fraudster setting up a new company online and passing it off as a subsidiary of the registered business.

Mr Coltman, who is also a  senior partner in a Coventry-based debt recovery specialist business, has been involved in a series of cases where fraudsters have tricked suppliers into delivering substantial quantities of goods.

In one case, £20,000 worth of champagne was delivered to an out of the way lock-up unit and another involved a series of orders for unpaid goods worth around £500,000, and a third an alleged identify theft by the friend of a director.

The “friend” of 15 years’ standing used the director’s name to set up a bogus company to defraud suppliers. Even after he had been exposed, the man continued to insist that he was the “real director”.

Mr Coltman said: “A lot of suppliers who are conned put it down to experience, but even after making checks and credit checks they can be fooled by a clever fraudster. They’re criminals with GCSEs.”

Companies House receives an average of 18 complaints a month about the misuse of a registered office address, but says the figure is low in relation to the 64,000 notifications about business changes handled each month.

The Business Department is consulting on whether changes should be made to the system of registered office addresses to try and reduce identity theft.

However, ICM believes that more rigorous changes and checks are needed.