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Companies House Stops Taking the Register on Trust

For a century and a half, the UK company register worked on a promise. Anyone could form a company, name themselves or someone else as a director, and file the paperwork without proving who they were. Companies House recorded what it was told and rarely questioned it. That arrangement is now ending, and it is ending against a set of fixed calendar dates rather than a vague ambition.

The change comes from the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, the biggest reform of UK company law since the register was created. Its central instrument is compulsory identity verification. Since 18 November 2025, anyone becoming a director or forming a company has had to verify their identity before the appointment or incorporation can take effect. The far larger task is the back book. Companies House estimates that six to seven million existing directors and persons with significant control, the individuals who ultimately own or control companies, must verify by the time the transition period closes in mid-November 2026.

That deadline, 18 November 2026, is the fulcrum of the reform. It is the point at which a registry that passively accepted declarations becomes a gatekeeper that checks them.

How the verification actually works

Companies House chose a phased rollout rather than asking millions of people to verify at once. New appointments were the first to bite, from 18 November 2025. Existing directors then verify in step with ordinary filing: they confirm they have verified their identity at the same time as they file their next annual confirmation statement, spread across the twelve-month transition window. Existing persons with significant control are given an allocated day, within twelve months of commencement, and a short window in which to confirm they have completed the check.

Verification can be done directly through Companies House using the GOV.UK One Login service, or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, an accountant, solicitor or company formation agent that has itself registered with Companies House and is supervised for anti-money-laundering purposes. The identity check is a one-off, tied to the person rather than to any single company, so a director of several companies verifies once.

Enforcement follows the deadline. Companies House has said that once the transition period ends, active compliance and enforcement will begin against those who were required to verify and did not. Failure to verify can ultimately restrict a person’s ability to act as a director and expose them to sanction, which is what gives the November 2026 date its force.

A second offence already in force

Identity verification is the visible half of the reform. The other half is a criminal offence that has been operating quietly since 1 September 2025: the corporate failure to prevent fraud.

Under this offence a large organisation can be criminally liable where an employee, agent, subsidiary or other associated person commits a fraud intending to benefit the organisation, and the organisation did not have reasonable fraud prevention procedures in place. It applies to large organisations, defined as those meeting two of three thresholds: turnover above 36 million pounds, a balance sheet total above 18 million pounds, or more than 250 employees. The only defence is to show that reasonable prevention procedures were in place, or that it was not reasonable to expect any.

The Home Office published statutory guidance on the offence on 6 November 2024, setting out what reasonable procedures look like. The guidance is advisory rather than binding, and it is careful to say that departing from it does not automatically mean a firm has failed, nor does following it provide a safe harbour. The practical effect is that boards of in-scope companies have spent the past year documenting fraud risk assessments and prevention controls in much the way the Bribery Act 2010 once forced them to document anti-bribery procedures.

The one deadline that slipped

Not every part of the reset has held to its original schedule. The requirement that people who make filings at Companies House, the presenters and third-party agents who submit documents on behalf of companies, must themselves be verified, and that professional filers must be registered as Authorised Corporate Service Providers before they can file, was originally expected to bite in spring 2026. Companies House has since pushed that requirement back to no earlier than November 2026, bunching it against the director and PSC deadline rather than staggering ahead of it.

The delay matters because it is the mechanism that closes the loop. Verifying directors and owners tightens who can be recorded on the register; verifying filers tightens who can change what the register says. Until the filer requirement lands, an unverified agent can still submit filings. The revised timetable means both halves now arrive at roughly the same moment in late 2026, concentrating the compliance burden on accountants, company secretaries and formation agents into a single stretch.

From ledger to gatekeeper

Taken together, the pieces describe a deliberate shift in what Companies House is for. The register was built as a public record, a ledger of what companies chose to declare. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act recasts it as a control point, with verified identities behind every name, a criminal offence hanging over large firms that tolerate fraud, and new powers for the registrar to query and reject suspect information.

The reform was driven by years of evidence that the openness of the UK register, its speed and low cost, had also made it a convenient tool for fraud, money laundering and the layering of shell companies. The response has been to keep the register open but to make it answer for its contents.

For the roughly six to seven million people who still have to verify, the immediate question is procedural: check the company’s next confirmation statement date, complete the GOV.UK One Login identity check or route it through a supervised agent, and do it before 18 November 2026. For everyone who relies on the register, from banks running customer checks to journalists tracing ownership, the more consequential change is what the date represents. After 18 November 2026, a name on the UK company register is meant to be a verified person, and Companies House has taken on the job of making sure of it.

Finance & Markets Correspondent
Covers: Finance, capital markets, technology investing

David Whitmore covers the intersection of capital and code — the funding rounds, market structures and policy moves that shape how money flows through the technology economy.