Tuesday 2 April 2013

SC Education




One of the most tiresome things about this blog is the way that some trifling remark of mine will be seized upon and analysed to death; those commenting being quite unable to let things drop. We saw a good example of this today. Somebody who has started commenting here recently asked who Alison Sauer is. I gave a brief and accurate answer:

She is rather a controversial figure in the British home education scene. A home educating parent herself, she runs a business which offers training to local authorities on the best way to deal with home education. Because she has a financial stake in this way, some people mistrust her and feel that she is not objective. Currently, she runs an outfit called SC Education which promotes flexi-schooling. Again, this could be a conflict of interest when she is campaigning about home education. She is a close associate of Mike Fortune-Wood, who runs the Home Education UK site and also of Wendy Charles-Warner, the Education Otherwise representative in Wales.


Of course, it could not end there! One person told me to ‘get my facts straight’ and another said that, ‘her LA training business went bust and so did her flexischooling business SC Education.’ This is not altogether true and so I responded by saying:

To be strictly accurate SC Education did not exist in the first place! She was trading under this name, but it was not registered at Companies House; which is sailing pretty close to the wind.

I thought that this would be the end of the it, but of course I was reckoning without some of the more, shall we say, determined characters who comment here. They seemed to think that this was an outrageous slur upon Alison Sauer and  indicated that I had an obsession with her. Let us just clear this up and see what the situation actually is with Alison Sauer’s various companies. I certainly do not think that the information I gave was ‘smearing’ her, as one person suggested.

Alison Sauer has a limited company called Sauer Consultancy, which she runs with her husband. Among other things, this company advises local authorities about home education. She and her husband are  also the directors of  Heatherside Homes Ltd; a company involved in property development. At the end of February 2012, Alison and her husband began two new companies and this is where things get a little confusing. She began calling her old company, Sauer Consultancy Ltd, SC Education. This was not a separate company, it was simply Sauer Consultancy, trading as SC Education. I’m not sure why she did this. I’ve been told that she felt her name was not a brilliant advertisement in view of some of the stuff which has happened in the past and that she wanted a neutral company name that would not be immediately associated with her. I don’t know how true this is.

Now there is no reason why you should not call your business by any name you like, as long as nobody else is using the name you have chosen. You must not however misrepresent yourself as  a limited company if you are not. If you are a limited company, then you must tell people who you are when you do business with them,  your registration number,  registered office and so on. This is where Alison fell down a little, because she began to stop telling people what the real name of her company was. Take a look at this;


http://www.sc-education.co.uk/details/article/test/



Now anybody reading this will draw at least one erroneous conclusion about the state of affairs. The first thing which is obvious is that this is  a company which is registered in the United Kingdom. At the bottom is the registration number and the registered address is also given. What is the name of the company? Well the heading is SC Education and the text refers to, ‘SC Education and its legal advisers’. The conclusion is inescapable; this document relates to a company called SC Education. Only of course it doesn’t; because there is no such company. Here is a person dealing with the public, but not revealing the name of her company. This is what I meant by ‘sailing close to the wind’. It is not a serious matter; the most that might happen is that she could get her knuckles rapped by the people at Companies House, but it is certainly misleading and confusing.  How mentioning this could be thought of as a ‘smear’ is quite beyond me! Confusion is almost guaranteed here, because until eighteen months earlier, there had been another company registered with this name at Companies House.

There is nothing criminal about any of this, it is the sort of thing that people do quite often, but it is never the less not strictly open and above board. SC Education have been representing themselves as a limited company, but do not really exist as a company at all.  I hope that this clears up this simple misunderstanding and explains why I said that she was sailing close to the wind.









25 comments:

  1. Go back to company law 101

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  2. Simon wrote,
    “It is not a serious matter; the most that might happen is that she could get her knuckles rapped by the people at Companies House, but it is certainly misleading and confusing.”

    Except that it says on the Companies House website FAQ (my emphasis),

    “5. Must I display my company name on my website?

    Yes. Every company must disclose its registered name on its websites. You do not need to include the company name on every page but it must be displayed so it can be easily read.”

    Simon wrote,
    “Confusion is almost guaranteed here, because until eighteen months earlier, there had been another company registered with this name at Companies House.”

    Hardly. It’s perfectly legal and normal to use the names of dissolved companies and they include their registration number and registered address, so they are unlikely to be confused for a dissolved company that was registered in Bath that appears to have stopped trading in 2006.

    I suspect that these pages are remnants of a larger site that should have been deleted but have been missed, since the rest of the site no longer appears.

    Simon wrote,
    “She began calling her old company, Sauer Consultancy Ltd, SC Education. This was not a separate company, it was simply Sauer Consultancy, trading as SC Education. I’m not sure why she did this.”

    Maybe to strengthen the link to Education? The registered name could indicate any kind of consultancy (and in fact their registration shows that they carry out management consultancy, for instance), so a trade name that stresses education seems appropriate for the company’s when dealing with activities in that area.

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  3. You and your readers have certainly been busy these past few days. I think I can get a lot of case study material for my paper from your blog and comments alone!

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    Replies
    1. Charity, if you're studying home education, can I put a quick word in for the mild mannered majority, many of whom, horrifying as it is to say this on Simon's blog, do not know he exists or post to any on line groups, although they may well lurk.

      What you're seeing are the outriders of the group, with very strong opinions. Most of us sort of muddle along.

      If you imagine it as school, a lot of people here are the ones who'd be governors or on the PTA. And those bodies have been known to squabble too!

      Atb
      Anne

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    2. ' many of whom, horrifying as it is to say this on Simon's blog, do not know he exists '

      Can this really be true? Lucky for you Anne, that I do not operate moderation here or you would be a prime candidate for having your comments blocked. Home educators who don't know I exist? I mean really!

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    3. It's a shocking thought, isn't it? But don't worry, most of them haven't heard of Alison either.

      All the home edders I know want to do the best for their children, and if that's in different ways then that's probably because all our children are different.

      When they play together what they're learning and how never comes into it. They're just kids in the sunshine and one thing we're all agreed on is that a big part of our job as parents is to give them time and space to be kids and grow up at their own speed and work out who they are.

      I have friends who are totally autonomous and friends who make me look like a disorganised slacker, but we can all discuss what works for us and why it works and stay friends. And yes, I know I'm lucky!

      Atb
      Anne


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    4. My paper is not on home education. It it going to be in the realm of interpersonal relationships and how the internet has changed that. If I get everything done that is. A new baby takes up a lot of time.

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    5. 'My paper is not on home education. It it going to be in the realm of interpersonal relationships and how the internet has changed that.'

      Well you've come to the right shop here and no mistake, Charity. Plenty of evidence her about the way in which anonymity on the Internet makes people ruder and generally more odd than when they are signing their names; to give one small example.

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  4. ''You and your readers have certainly been busy these past few days. I think I can get a lot of case study material for my paper from your blog and comments alone!'

    You may well say so, Charity! This is nothing; merely polite chat. Look back through some of the posts a few years ago and you will faint with shock at the things being said.

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  5. ' You do not need to include the company name on every page'

    Perfectly true, of course. Except that what is happening here is not that the company name is not being included on every page, but rather that another company name, one which is not a registered company, is being used. This is misleading.


    'Simon wrote,
    “Confusion is almost guaranteed here, because until eighteen months earlier, there had been another company registered with this name at Companies House.”

    Hardly. It’s perfectly legal and normal to use the names of dissolved companies'

    Very few people bother to look up the registration numbers of companies and see if they match up to the real name of the company with whom they are dealing. Anybody trading with SC Education and seeing the registered address and number displayed on every page, would naturally have assumed that they were dealing with a company called SC Education. If later, they wished to complain, they might go beetling off to Companies House, trying to find out who SC Education are. They would then find that the company was dissolved in September 2010. This would, as I said, cause confusion.

    None of this is criminal, but is bound to raise a few eyebrows. The worst that Alison Sauer could expect from this would be a letter from Companies House, reminding her to use her company's name on literature. It is, never the less, sailing close to the wind, because somebody less scrupulous in commercial practice than Alison, could mislead clients by doing this.

    Perhaps a real life case which shows the pitfalls of representing your company name incorrectly will make things a little clearer. A company established a car salesroom called, shall we say, 'Brown's Autos'. There was a notice on the premises with a registered address and company number, as required by law and for a year, everything went smoothly. Then the business folded up and did a moonlight. Irate people, who were owed money, tried to track it down at Companies House by searching for every variation of 'Brown's Autos'. In the end, they discovered that it had actually been a registered company called 'Smith's Autos', but had only been known in that district as 'Brown's Autos'.

    Does everybody see now the confusion that can be created by using the wrong name and connecting it with a valid registered address and number of a genuine company which is called something quite different? I do not suppose for a moment that there was any intention to deceive on the part of Alison Sauer, which is why I have used words such as 'misleading', 'muddle' and 'confusion' in connection with this. It is bad practice and can lead to problems.



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  6. "None of this is criminal, but is bound to raise a few eyebrows. The worst that Alison Sauer could expect from this would be a letter from Companies House"

    They have followed the regulations according to the Companies House web site so this seems unlikely.

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  7. 'They have followed the regulations according to the Companies House web site'

    I'm afraid that the regulations at Companies House do not allow people to use a company name combined with the number and registered office of a different company! Don't take my word for this, but simply give Companies House a quick call.

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    Replies
    1. It isn't a company name, it's a trade name. There's a difference. If they has given the name as SC Education Limited, you may have had a point.

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    2. 'It isn't a company name, it's a trade name. There's a difference. If they has given the name as SC Education Limited, you may have had a point.'

      As I think I explained, if you use a name and then put a company number and registered office beneath it, then everybody will think that that is the name of the company. I am not asking anybody to take my word for this, but simply to check for themselves with Companies House.

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  8. Alison probably wanted to re-brand but she still wanted her old clients, the local authorities, to know who she was with her new name. Hence the line about SC Education being a trading name of The Sauer Consultancy Limited along with the company number.

    She wanted her new potential clients, the schools, to know that she was working in Education, her REGISTERED name did not show that. The trading name did. It's a bit like a woman who gets married a double-barrels her name. Everyone will still know what name she used to have and will know what name her spouse has.

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  9. 'Everyone will still know what name she used to have and will know what name her spouse has.'

    True enough and as long as you still use both names, matters are not likely to get muddled up. In some of Alison Sauer's material though, for example the one I gave a link to above, there is no mention at all of the real name of the registered company. This is confusing. It is less like a woman using a double barreled name and more like a woman called Mrs Jones telling everybody that her name is Mrs Smith.

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  10. Hasn't she ceased trading as SC Education? I mean she is a Trustee for CPE-PEN now. I should think that would be a conflict of interest to be earning money from education while being the trustee of an education charity. She is also the flexischooling contact for Education Otherwise. Since flexischooling has been more or less eliminated by the DfE is there any point to her having that role?

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    Replies
    1. Perhaps you should take that up with EO?

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    2. I highly doubt EO would let her go from her post. Volunteers are hard to come by these days and with all the benefits reforms it will be harder than ever to get volunteers.

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    3. I know several people who would be happy to volunteer if certain people were no longer involved. So letting some people go may result in a deluge of volunteers. I also know of people who have offered their services to eo and their offers were not taken up.

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  11. Is she a Trustee for them? Her name doesn't appear here:

    http://www.personalisededucationnow.org.uk/AboutUs_Funded.php

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  12. 'Is she a Trustee for them? Her name doesn't appear here:

    She is a trustee. Chris Shute died recently and Alison became a trustee shortly afterwards.

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  13. 'Hasn't she ceased trading as SC Education?'

    Not according to her Linkedin profile:

    http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alison-sauer/1b/503/884

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  14. Perhaps she simply hasn't got around to updating her linkedin profile?

    Just because at one point something was correct does not mean that it is currently still correct.

    I would also have to agree that not everyone has heard of you and that the majority of home educators just get on with caring for their children whilst ignoring you. Sorry to bruise your ego old sport, but your kudos is less than your ego suggests.

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  15. 'I would also have to agree that not everyone has heard of you and that the majority of home educators just get on with caring for their children whilst ignoring you. Sorry to bruise your ego old sport, but your kudos is less than your ego suggests.'

    Why on earth would I be receiving kudos for writing a blog? This has to be one of the oddest things I have heard all day.

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