Whether or not 301 redirect is a good idea

[dawlish]

I have recently taken over a site from another firm of developers. The websites is aimed entirely at a UK audience, however it is was developed and is hosted by a US company and the primary domain is companyname.com. As a consequence the site does not appear when applying the UK filter on www.google.co.uk.

I'm not sure what the best option is, use a 301 to point www.companyname.com to www.companyname.co.uk or move the site to a UK server?

Does anyone have any experience with 301 and the consequences? With using a 301 result in the site dropping dramatically or being 'sandboxed' from the search results. I don't want to advise anything to my client which will cause them problems, they just asked me why they don't appear when you search for their company name on www.google.co.uk.