The hard deadline in Britain’s biggest company-law reform in a generation is 18 November 2026. For most of the people it binds, the date that actually matters is earlier than that, and for many it has already gone.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 makes identity verification compulsory for everyone who runs or controls a UK company. Since 18 November 2025 the rule has applied to new directors and to anyone forming a company: no verified identity, no valid appointment. The far larger job is the existing population. Companies House estimates that between six and seven million people already sitting on the register as directors or as persons with significant control must verify during a twelve-month transition that closes on 18 November 2026.
That closing date is a ceiling, not the moment most people should be working towards. The transition is designed to run through the ordinary filing cycle rather than as a single stampede, and the trigger for each individual is the company’s confirmation statement.
Why the confirmation statement moves the deadline forward
Every UK company files a confirmation statement once a year, the annual check that its registered details are correct. Under the transition, an existing director has to verify their identity by the date of their company’s first confirmation statement due on or after 18 November 2025. A company whose statement falls in, say, March 2026 pulls its directors’ personal deadline to March, not to the following November. Because confirmation-statement dates are spread across the calendar, so are the real deadlines. Roughly a twelfth of the affected population has come due each month since late 2025, and a large share of the six to seven million are already required to have verified.
Persons with significant control who are not also directors follow a slightly different route. Companies House allocates them a personal deadline within the transition window and gives them a short period around it to confirm the check is complete. The principle is the same: the November ceiling is the last possible date, not a single national one.
For anyone unsure where they stand, the practical step is to look up the company’s next confirmation-statement date on the public register and work back from it.
Two ways to verify, and why agents matter
There are two routes. An individual can verify directly with Companies House through the GOV.UK One Login service, the same digital identity system used across government, which checks a passport, driving licence or other document. Alternatively, the check can be done through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, an accountant, solicitor or company-formation agent that has registered with Companies House for the purpose and is supervised for anti-money-laundering compliance. The provider carries out the identity check and confirms it to the registrar.
The verification is a one-off and attaches to the person, not to each company. A director of a dozen companies verifies once and carries the same verified status across all of them. That design is what makes the authorised-agent route significant. Accountancy and company-secretarial firms are handling verification in bulk for client portfolios, and the professional bodies have spent the past year registering members as authorised providers so they can do so. For the millions who never deal directly with Companies House, the agent is the route through which the deadline is met.
What happens if the deadline is missed
Companies House has been careful about how it describes the consequences, and so should any account of them be. Failing to verify when required to do so is an offence, and the registrar will be able to impose a financial penalty or place an annotation on the company’s record noting the non-compliance. Continuing to act as a director without having verified can itself be an offence, exposing the individual and not only the company.
The sharper practical bite runs through the confirmation statement. An unverified director cannot have the company’s confirmation statement accepted, and failing to file a confirmation statement is a separate offence that can bring financial penalties and, ultimately, strike-off from the register. That is the mechanism that turns a missed identity check into a cascading problem: the personal deadline and the company’s annual return are wired together, so one unverified name can stall the whole filing.
The operational reality now
For company directors and the agents who file for them, this is no longer a policy on the horizon. It is a live administrative task with a personal deadline attached to each name, and for a large part of the affected population that deadline is in the past or arriving within weeks. The register lists more than five million companies, most of them small, and the long tail of single-director firms, dormant vehicles and family companies is precisely where verification is most likely to be forgotten until a filing is refused.
The advice from Companies House and from the accountancy bodies is consistent and deliberately dull. Check the confirmation-statement date. Verify through GOV.UK One Login or an authorised agent. Do it before the company’s next filing rather than waiting for the November ceiling. The reform that turns a name on the register into a checked identity does not arrive with a single switch on 18 November 2026. It arrives one confirmation statement at a time, and for millions of directors the clock is already running.
Sources: Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023; Companies House guidance on identity verification and the transition timetable (verification mandatory for new directors and incorporations from 18 November 2025; twelve-month transition for existing directors and PSCs to 18 November 2026; verification tied to the first confirmation statement due on or after 18 November 2025); GOV.UK One Login identity-verification service; Companies House register of Authorised Corporate Service Providers; Companies House guidance on PSC verification, penalties, annotations and confirmation-statement enforcement.
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