The Owners’ Index· Edition I
Reference · The Owners’ Index

How to verify a UK business at Companies House: a practical guide

Companies House is the United Kingdom's public register of companies. It holds, on the public record and free at the point of access, the formal documentary record of every limited company, limited liability partnership, and registered overseas company doing business in the UK. As of mid-2024 the register held over 5.3 million entities.

For owner-operators, journalists, suppliers, prospective employees, and anyone who needs to understand the formal shape of a UK business, Companies House is the first stop. This is a working guide to what is there, how to read it, and what its limits are. It is the same guide we use internally when verifying applicants to the Owners' Index.

Where to start

The free search interface lives at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. You can search by company name or by company registration number.

The company registration number — the CRN — is the eight-character identifier (e.g. 12345678 for companies registered in England and Wales, SC123456 for Scotland, NI123456 for Northern Ireland). It does not change for the life of the company. It is the only fully unique identifier — company names can change, and similar names recur.

If you do not know the CRN, search by name. The result list shows every active and dissolved company with a matching or similar name. Pay attention to status (active, dissolved, in administration), incorporation date, and registered office.

What you can find for free

The free public record on each company includes:

Company overview. Registered office address, country of incorporation, company type (private limited, public limited, LLP, etc.), date of incorporation, accounting reference date, status, and nature of business (SIC codes).

Filing history. Every document the company has filed with Companies House since the digital record began. This includes annual accounts, confirmation statements, changes of officer, changes of registered office, share allotments, and material events such as administration or strike-off proceedings. Filings going back five years are typically immediately legible. Older ones may require a small payment to retrieve scanned copies.

Officers. Current and historical directors and secretaries with their service addresses, dates of appointment, dates of resignation, and dates of birth (month and year only, on the public record). For each officer you can see every other company they have been an officer of, which is one of the most useful features of the system.

People with significant control (PSC). Anyone holding more than 25% of shares, more than 25% of voting rights, or with the right to appoint or remove the majority of the board must be declared by name on the PSC register. This was introduced in 2016 and is the single most important addition to UK corporate transparency in a generation. For owner-operator verification, it is the primary source.

Charges. Any registered charges over the company's assets — typically a debenture in favour of a bank lender or invoice finance provider. The presence and dates of these tell you a great deal about how the business is financed.

Reading the accounts

For most owner-operator businesses the accounts will be filed under one of three regimes:

  • Micro-entity accounts (FRS 105). Very small companies — turnover under £632,000, balance sheet under £316,000, fewer than 10 employees. Discloses very little beyond a simplified balance sheet and a note on average employees.
  • Small company accounts (FRS 102 Section 1A). Turnover under £10.2m, balance sheet under £5.1m, fewer than 50 employees. Discloses balance sheet, simplified P&L (optional), notes on tangible fixed assets, debtors, creditors, share capital, and directors' remuneration.
  • Full FRS 102 / FRS 101 accounts. Medium and large companies. Full profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow statement, comprehensive notes.

Most Tier I owner-operator businesses file small company accounts. The single most important page is usually the directors' loan account note — it shows whether the owner has been lending money to or borrowing money from the business. Sustained directors' loans to the company in either direction are a useful signal.

The next most important figures are:

  • Net current assets / liabilities. Positive working capital is what keeps a business solvent. A negative figure persisting across multiple years is a warning sign.
  • Average number of employees. Disclosed even in micro-entity filings. Combined with publicly available salary benchmarks, it gives you a rough lower bound on the cost base.
  • Tangible fixed assets. A line that grows over time suggests reinvestment. A line that does not move or shrinks suggests an asset-light business — or a winding-down one.
  • Cash at bank. Disclosed in small and full accounts. A cash balance that is large relative to turnover suggests a profitable, well-run business. A cash balance that shrinks year-on-year is a question worth asking.

Small company accounts do not require turnover or profit disclosure on the public record. For an owner-operator listed on the Index, we therefore ask applicants to share their management accounts and audited accounts privately as part of the Methodology.

Reading the officers

The officers section tells you who is legally responsible for the company. For an owner-operator business you would typically expect:

  • Director(s). One to three named individuals, with the principal owner-operator listed. Resignation dates on the public record show turnover at the top of the company.
  • Company secretary. Optional for private companies since 2008. Many small companies do not have one. The absence is not significant.

The "other companies" feature for each officer is one of the most useful tools on the entire register. Cross-referencing an officer's directorships gives you a portrait of their broader operational footprint — group structures, holding companies, dormant entities, prior ventures. It is also a good test of whether the person presenting themselves to you as a focused operator is in fact running a dozen companies simultaneously.

Reading the PSC register

The Persons of Significant Control register is the closest thing the UK has to a public-facing ownership record. For each PSC you can see:

  • Name, country of residence, nationality
  • Month and year of birth (full date is private)
  • Nature of control (percentage band of shares — over 25%, over 50%, over 75%)
  • Date became registrable
  • Date ceased (if no longer a PSC)

The percentage bands matter. Crossing from 25% to 50% to 75% changes the legal position of the shareholder materially. The 75% threshold is the special-resolution threshold, which allows constitutional changes to the company without consent from minority shareholders. A single PSC at over 75% is what most owner-operator businesses look like.

If the PSC register lists no individual but only a corporate entity, that corporate entity must itself disclose its PSCs (or onward corporate structure). Tracking through a holding company structure is straightforward in the UK and is one of the standard checks we run on Index applicants.

What Companies House does not tell you

The register has limits. It is important to know what they are.

  • Turnover and profit are not on the public record for small companies. Companies opting for small or micro-entity reporting do not publish their P&L. You have to ask.
  • Cash position is a snapshot, not a trend. Accounts are filed nine months after year-end. They are months out of date by the time you read them.
  • Off-balance-sheet liabilities. Operating leases pre-2019 reform, contingent liabilities, supplier credit terms, personal guarantees by the directors — none of this is fully visible on the public record.
  • Quality of the business. The register tells you nothing about whether the company's customers are happy, whether its product works, or whether the founder is good. It is a record of legal form, not of operational substance.
  • Identity verification of officers and PSCs. Until very recently, Companies House did not verify the identities of the people named on its filings. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 changed this — identity verification has been rolling in throughout 2024-2026 — but historic records reflect a less rigorous regime.

For owner-operator verification we therefore use Companies House as the formal record and then layer:

  • Two reference calls with people who are already in the room and have worked with the applicant
  • Personal interview with the editor
  • Sight of audited accounts (private)
  • Sector-specific references where applicable (industry bodies, major customers, banking relationships)

Companies House is necessary but not sufficient. The Index does not list anyone on the strength of the public record alone.

A worked example

Take a hypothetical Tier I applicant: Margaret Holloway, manufacturing.

  1. Search "Holloway Manufacturing" on Companies House. Several matches appear. Filter by registered office (Burnley) and active status.
  2. Open the active company. Confirm incorporation date (2009), status (active), nature of business SIC codes (28 — manufacture of machinery).
  3. Officers tab: Margaret Holloway listed as director from 2009 to present. No other current directors. Two former directors (an accountant who resigned in 2014, a brother who resigned in 2019).
  4. PSC tab: Margaret Holloway, over 75% of shares. No other PSCs.
  5. Filing history: small company accounts filed annually, on time, every year since 2010. Most recent accounts filed five months after year-end.
  6. Other officerships: Margaret Holloway is a director of one other active company (the trading subsidiary) and three dormant companies (a holding company, a property company, a former subsidiary now in voluntary strike-off). No red flags.
  7. Charges: one active charge in favour of a UK clearing bank, dated 2015, satisfied 2022. Suggests a paid-down banking facility.

The picture this paints is consistent with the applicant's self-description: a sole owner-operator who has run the business for over fifteen years, retains majority control, files on time, and has paid down her debt. That is the starting point. The reference calls and the editor's interview do the rest.

A short checklist

When you need to verify a UK business — for procurement, partnership, employment, or curiosity — work through this list:

  1. Confirm CRN and company status
  2. Read the most recent filed accounts in full
  3. Check the average number of employees against the company's stated size
  4. Read the PSC register and trace through any corporate parents
  5. Cross-reference all current and former officers' other directorships
  6. Note any charges and their satisfaction dates
  7. Look for filing-history gaps or late filings — they are usually a sign of distress

Twenty minutes of methodical reading at Companies House will tell you more about a UK business than an hour of conversation with the person running it.

Related reading: What is an owner-operator? · Methodology · The UK SME landscape, in numbers