The complaint came from Clive May, a Scottish bricklayer, who highlighted a number of instances where handwritten amendments had been made to the accounts, on areas such as capital expenditure and board members’ outside commercial interests, arguing that they were difficult to read.
Mr May told The Times that “hastily penned corrections” raised concerns over how accurate the accounts were, and suggested that if he had filed his business’s accounts in a similar way he would have been investigated.
In a statement, the FCA said that it was not in breach of any rules and noted that it is required to lay its annual report before Parliament.
It added: “The original report which included green pen adjustments from the National Audit Office and had the relevant signatures was submitted to Companies House. The FCA has always submitted the original signed copy to Companies House and published a clean version on its website. Both accounts are the same. The report submitted to Companies House was in line with their policy and they won’t allow illegible accounts before loading them on their website.
“However, given the comments raised about the accounts, we proposed to Companies House, who agreed, that we should provide a clean copy of our accounts.”
