Responsible person - single name or company?

[steve m]

I understand the responsible person for a business or workplace  may be the owner or person who has control but does it have to be a name, i.e J. Bloggs, or can it be a company name or  title as in office manager or director, where there may be several different persons doing the same role. Also can it be a management company or freehold company for flat owner/occupiers or does one of the residents have to put their name to the risk assessment. 

My reason for asking is, can the enforcing authority take a management company/business to court or does it need to be an individual.

I am finding that, especially for communal areas, the residents are asking for either the management company name or if owner/occupiers their company name to be put as the responsible person and it has now got me thinking about who the enforcing authority would take action against should they need to do so.

Basically what/who is it acceptable to be put as a " responsible person" on a risk assessment and finally, can you have more than one named "responsible person"

Many thanks

[AnthonyB]

The responsible person can be a corporate entity. A multi occupied premises may have multiple RP's.

The RP is the person or entity at the top of the tree - employer/person having control/owner. Whilst others may have day to day responsibilities towards a premises they are not the RP as set out in law, merely persons with responsibilities - whilst they may be directly responsible for an offence and can (& have been) individually prosecuted, it's usually not instead of the actual 'tree top' RP but as well as.