A head office company in Hindley, Wigan

A head office oversees and manages other units of the same enterprise and takes the strategic and organisational decisions for them. That is the activity recorded against this company at Companies House, and it is an accurate description of the work.

In practice it means the company sits above the businesses in which it holds interests, and its work is ownership, direction and administration rather than trading in its own right.

Decisions of substance are taken once, at head office level, so that the businesses held work to a single set of expectations. The administration that goes with ownership — statutory records, correspondence, filings and returns — is carried in one place rather than repeated in each of them.

The people the head office deals with are the suppliers who serve it, the professional advisers who need the company's particulars for their own files, and the public bodies that write about registers and filings.

Letters, emails and telephone calls come to the head office at Hindley. If an enquiry concerns one of the businesses held rather than the head office itself, say so, and it will be passed on.