How do you serve documents on a partnership or LLP?

Partnerships sued in the firm name

The CPR allows claims against partners to be brought in the name of the firm, and the address table in CPR 6.9 permits service at the principal or last known place of business of the partnership. Personal service on any partner, or on a person having control or management of the partnership business at its principal place of business, is also effective. Because partnerships leave lighter public footprints than companies, verifying that a trading address is genuinely the principal place of business is often the real work, and a server’s attendance report documents exactly what was found at the address.

LLPs and companies

For registered companies and LLPs there are two parallel routes: the statutory route under section 1139 of the Companies Act 2006, by leaving the document at or posting it to the registered office, and the CPR 6.9 route at the principal office or any place of business with a real connection to the claim. Where a registered office is a formation agent’s address or appears abandoned, serving at the operational address under CPR 6.9, evidenced properly, avoids later argument; our answer on serving a registered office covers the company position in detail.

Getting the entity right before serving

Many service disputes begin with misidentifying the defendant: a sole trader with a trading name, a partnership that incorporated last year, a group with similar names at one address. Pre-service checks against Companies House and on the ground observation at the address resolve this before the claim form is committed, which is considerably cheaper than amending proceedings afterwards.