One year after my father’s death, a Companies House email lands in my inbox.

Let me set the scene. It’s May 2025, and my father died just over a year ago, following a brutal and undignified final chapter that included cancer and Alzheimer’s. My parents had been together for seventy years, a lifetime. In the months before and after my father’s death, I spent weeks outside the UK, shuttling between countries, patching together care for my mother and doing all the emotional and administrative heavy lifting that comes with bereavement.

I have previously written at length about the ongoing struggles with government and financial digital services that not only exclude and alienate people like my 89-year-old mother but also leave me tearing out whatever hair I have left, even after four decades in digital transformation.

If you’ve experienced the slow-motion car crash of losing a parent after a long illness, you’ll know there is no such thing as “normal life” for a while. Paperwork piles up. Deadlines pass, often unnoticed or frankly irrelevant. But the machinery of the state and its agencies grinds on, entirely untroubled by the details of individual human lives.

Which brings me to an email that landed with a thud in my inbox this week from Companies House, the UK government’s corporate registrar. The subject line? “File your accounts now for COMPANY NAME LIMITED.” What follows is a case study in tone-deaf, trauma-blind, bureaucratic content. It’s the kind of message that reveals just how little has changed in the mindset of some government services, even after two decades of digital “transformation”.

Anatomy of an unempathetic email

Let’s break down the main features of the message:

• A stark, black-and-white directive: “You must file your accounts by 30 June 2025.”

• A bright red warning: “Last year this company failed to deliver its accounts by the deadline. If accounts are filed late this year, the late filing penalty will be doubled.”

• A legal finger-wag: “As the company director, you’re legally responsible for filing accounts on time, even if your company is dormant or not trading. You’re still legally responsible even if you use an agent or accountant to do this for you.”

It’s difficult to overstate just how impersonal and, frankly, threatening this language is. The entire message is built on assumptions: that people are at home to read correspondence as soon as it arrives, that they are careless, lazy, or feckless, and that the only way to get them to comply is to ramp up the threats and penalties.

There is a single, generic paragraph at the end offering support if you “can’t pay your bills”, as if missing a filing deadline is always the result of financial misfortune or incompetence, rather than something more complex like, say, bereavement or caring responsibilities.

When did empathy become so alien to public services?

Here’s what this email doesn’t acknowledge, let alone address:

• That directors of small companies may be human beings with lives that can implode in ways that make company admin simply impossible for a time.

• That serious illness and death are not only traumatic but also administratively overwhelming.

• That people may miss deadlines for reasons entirely beyond their control and that the very last thing they need is an impersonal, hostile reminder, bristling with threats of financial penalties.

• That not everyone goes home to pick up their mail every night, whether they work elsewhere in the UK, as I did for fourteen months when I wrote Universal Credit, or out of necessity have an international lifestyle.

Last year, I missed the filing deadline because I was living out of a suitcase, dividing my time between hospitals, care homes and my mother’s kitchen. I sent Companies House my father’s death certificate as evidence of why the accounts had been delayed. The response? “You missed the deadline for submitting such evidence”, as if there’s a right time to die.

No acknowledgement, no flexibility, no offer of support, just a Kafkaesque circularity: you can only get help if you ask at the right time, in the right format, through the right channel. Otherwise, the system simply shrugs and penalises you.

The digital “transformation” myth: from bad to worse

Now, let’s be clear. My criticism isn’t of the individual staff at Companies House, most of whom are just doing their jobs under the constraints of legacy processes, systems and leadership mindsets. I know this better than most: as a hybrid contractor, I migrated seventy-odd Companies House paper forms into online forms, working in Cardiff.

At the time, I pressed for a proper content design process. I argued for user research, for mapping out journeys that reflected the actual messiness of real life. But I was told, in no uncertain terms, that this was a straightforward, like-for-like migration: paper forms became web forms, end of discussion. Content wasn’t to be rethought or redesigned. There was no appetite for real empathy, or even for making things clearer and more humane.

This attitude persists a decade later in the content you see today. The message I received could have come straight from an 1980s government office, save for the fact that it arrived via email instead of in a brown envelope.

Why does this matter? The psychological cost of trauma-ignorant content

If you think I’m being overly dramatic, I’d encourage you to reflect on the cumulative effect of official content like this. When you’re dealing with grief, trauma, or acute stress, your cognitive capacity drops through the floor. Processing admin is difficult at the best of times; when you’re bereaved, it’s a Sisyphean task.

The “you-must-or-else” tone triggers anxiety and shame. The repeated warnings about penalties, doubled fines, and legal responsibility do nothing to foster compliance. They raise stress levels, making it more likely that the overwhelmed recipient will freeze, procrastinate or disengage altogether.

Worse still, such content signals that the organisation does not care about your situation. It tells you that your suffering is, at best, an inconvenience and, at worst, a personal failing. In trauma-informed practice, we talk about “secondary trauma”, the harm caused not by the original event but by the system’s response. This is a textbook example.

The myth of tidy trauma: It’s never just one thing

There’s a dangerous myth in both content and service design: that trauma is tidy and easily classified. On paper, my experience last year counts as macro trauma. My father died after a long illness. But the reality wasn’t a single event. It was a relentless, grinding sequence of micro traumas.

After the funeral, the so-called “admin” phase began: caring for my mother, who had just lost her partner of seventy years; endlessly shuttling between countries, often living out of a suitcase, and trying to keep my own business afloat, all while my own grief sat somewhere at the bottom of a to-do list I never seemed to reach. Add to that the stress of sorting out a complex estate, navigating probate and dealing with UK authorities from abroad.

If I’m honest, I’ve barely had time to process my personal bereavement. The macro trauma is obviously my father’s death, but it’s the steady drip-drip-drip of micro traumas that really wears you down. The worry about my career and finances (because being a carer is, it turns out, not great for billable hours). The anxiety of not being able to be there for my husband as much as I should, or being on the other end of the phone when one of our dogs broke a leg and needed surgery while I was, yet again, abroad.

This is the reality for millions of people: trauma isn’t always a headline event. It’s an accumulative pressure, the sum of constant, conflicting responsibilities, the things you must do at the expense of the things you need to feel human.

Why does this matter for content?

Because official communications, like the email from Companies House, rarely consider this. They operate as if life can be paused for paperwork, and that users are only dealing with one problem at a time. The reality is that most of us are never just a “user” or “director” or “customer.” We’re people, carrying dozens of burdens that don’t fit into a tick-box.

Trauma-informed content isn’t just about acknowledging the big, dramatic events. It’s about recognising the weight of everything else: the micro traumas, the relentless background stress and the reality that people don’t leave their problems at the login screen.

What should trauma-informed content look like? And why the current “support” fails

Let’s not kid ourselves: Companies House letters do technically mention that support is available if you’re experiencing difficulties. But here’s the reality: these lifelines are rigged with caveats. You must submit your evidence of bereavement, illness, or crisis before the deadline passes. Miss that window, because, for instance, you’re too busy holding your family together, travelling between countries, or trying not to fall apart, and you’re out of luck.

That’s not trauma-informed content. That’s bureaucracy performing empathy while building in escape clauses to ensure nobody actually gets any.

When I submitted my father’s death certificate, I did so exactly as advised: to explain why I had missed the previous year’s filing deadline. The response? “You missed the deadline for submitting such evidence.” Apparently, unless you can schedule your bereavement or life emergency to coincide neatly with their forms and timeframes, you’re still penalised. The “help” is not really for the people in crisis, but for those who are organised in their crisis.

What would actual trauma-informed content look like?

It would acknowledge that, in real life, you might not be able to provide evidence or request an extension until after a crisis has occurred.

It would offer meaningful flexibility, not rigid, performative compassion that evaporates when you miss a bureaucratic window.

It would start from a place of trust, not suspicion, and treat your situation as genuine unless there’s evidence to the contrary.

It would say, up front: “If you have missed a deadline due to bereavement or serious illness, and can provide evidence, contact us, even if the deadline has passed. We’ll work with you.”

If this sounds revolutionary, it shouldn’t. It’s just what you’d expect from any organisation that truly puts people before process.

Why is trauma-informed content so rare?

You might think that, in 2025, after years of buzz about user-centred design, “digital transformation”, and inclusive government services, this kind of content would be standard. Sadly, you’d be wrong.

Here’s why:

1. Legacy mindsets: Many agencies, including Companies House, remain wedded to the assumption that their “users” are faceless entities or bad actors out to dodge the rules, not real people who are often running small companies or fulfilling legal obligations as a sideline to lives already packed with complexity.

2. Risk aversion: The terror of saying anything that might be construed as lenient or unofficial often trumps empathy. The “computer says no” culture persists, now with added automation.

3. A lack of lived experience in content teams: Far too few people involved in designing these communications have lived through serious bereavement, illness, or other major disruptions. If they had, these messages would be different.

4. Tick-box digital transformation: Too many organisations see “digital” as a matter of moving forms online, not rethinking services for actual human needs. Content is an afterthought, a necessary evil to be migrated like-for-like from paper to web.

The consequences, real and measurable

For those of us on the receiving end, the result is not merely irritation but real distress. If you’re trying to rebuild your life after loss, or keep a business afloat while your world unravels, receiving yet another email that barks instructions and threatens penalties isn’t just unhelpful but also actively harmful.

And, to put it bluntly, it doesn’t even work on its own terms. Penalty-driven, unsympathetic content doesn’t drive compliance; it drives avoidance and disengagement. People who feel threatened, judged or unsupported are more likely to put off the task, not less.

A better way: Practical steps for trauma-informed content in government

So what can be done? It’s not rocket science, but it does require will:

• Acknowledge the context: Recognise that users may be experiencing stress, bereavement, or illness. Even a single sentence of acknowledgement can make a difference.

• Offer support early, not just at the end: Don’t bury help in a generic paragraph after three rounds of finger-wagging. Bring it up front, make it real, and make it easy to access.

• Be clear about rules, but don’t weaponise them: It’s perfectly possible to explain legal obligations without defaulting to threats and shaming.

• Empower frontline staff: Give customer service teams the flexibility to exercise discretion and compassion when people provide evidence of trauma or genuine difficulty.

• Test with real users, including those who have experienced or are experiencing trauma: Content that’s only ever seen by bureaucrats will never work for real people.

We can and must do better

I’ve spent decades in content design, digital transformation and government services. I’ve helped turn paper into pixels, advocated for users, and seen repeatedly how easy it is for organisations to forget that every “user” is a person, sometimes going through the very worst moments of their lives.

If Companies House and agencies like it want to deliver on the promise of digital transformation, it’s time to drop the “computer says no” mentality and start treating people like people. Trauma-informed content is not a luxury. It’s the bare minimum of what we should expect in a civilised society.

The tools are there and the evidence is overwhelming. All that’s missing is the will. It’s time we demanded better, not just for ourselves but for everyone who will one day find themselves on the sharp end of bureaucratic indifference at the worst possible time.