The accounts of Thames Water Utilities Limited for 2017 as filed with Companies House were sent to me yesterday. They were filed in June last year:
There is a problem with them. This is the income statement:
It's pretty hard to tell that the accounts are for the year to 31 March 2017. And that doesn't matter anyway as there is no data to view. It's all in that black box that is utterly illegible.
Now, let me be clear: this is not Thames' fault. They have, like lots of media savvy companies, produced a glossy report in a format that I presume they hoped was easy to read and no doubt highlighted the current year figures by printing them against a coloured background.
In fact, I know that's true, because here is that same page from the Thames Water web site:
So what has happened is that a set of accounts, using the far from modern technique of colour printing, has been rendered utterly useless by Companies House because they won't scan in colour.
This is 2018! What the heck are they thinking?
And why is it that they filed the accounts in any case if their insistence on black and white scans made them illegible?
The UK needs to hold companies to account. It's supposedly the task of Companies House to help us do that. And it's failing when it does things like this.
If we can't even get the scanning of documents right when seeking to control companies what chance is there of preventing another Carillion?
It really is time Companies House was massively reformed. It can't even get the basic right. And I have a strong suspicion that may be a political choice.
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I agree with all of that except…
“Now, let me be clear: this is not Thames’ fault. ”
They seem to have failed to follow simple rules in submitting their accounts to Company’s House!
I’d imagine that they were initially scanned in colour (pretty much all scanners are colour these days), but the image was then automatically converted to a 1-bit image (i.e. every pixel is either black or white) to save storage space. A 1-bit image is a fraction of the size of a typical colour image which is 24-bit.
Understandable that they want to save storage space and keep the files as small as possible but utterly stupid that they haven’t considered some scans won’t stay readable after conversion to 1-bit. Standard monochrome is 8-bit (256 shades of grey) and storage is very cheap these days so that would probably be the sensible way to go.
Your theory *might* have made sense in, say, 1995. But today the price of digital storage is so little, and falling so fast, that there is no good reason to “save” storage by destroying the documents!
The system dealing with these documents could quite possibly have been set up back in 1995!
I’ve no personal experience of the matter, but in general, I’d never underestimate just how primitive (relatively speaking), government systems could be!
In my office, we still run very old software in virtual machines in a modern operating system. It works, so why change it?
Well said Mariner. This will be why we are *always* told to use black ink when filling in forms. Sadly, such simple matters are generally beyond the wit of people today, who seem to take pleasure in not understanding how things work 🙁
I’ve emailed companies house several times in the past about this and I’ve had non-replies back. I’d recommend another try.
Businesses should always use black and white for this exact reasons. But the annual report is an investment tool where you try to fit as much good sounding rubbish in as possible while you try to gloss over the losses and failures.
It is entirely Thames Waters fault. They are supposed to submit black and white documents which are designed to be scanned.
Richard, how can you be ignorant of this well known requirement ?
I was not ignorant of the requirement
I posted that Companies House had not acted on the requirement
And that it should anyway amend it
But you just chose to offer abuse
Trolls are not welcome here
I am aware of the stupid requirement
I am saying it is stupid
How can you so miss the point of what I wrote to make a petty comment?