Since 18 November 2025, everyone who runs or controls a UK company has had to verify their identity with Companies House. Existing directors and people with significant control (PSCs) were given a 12-month transition period, and it ends on 18 November 2026. For most practices that means a lot of limited-company clients to chase in the next two months - and for many of them, the real deadline is earlier than November.

Who has to verify

  • Directors of UK companies, including directors of dormant companies and family companies where "nobody really runs it".
  • People with significant control (PSCs) - usually shareholders with more than 25%.
  • LLP members and other director equivalents.

New directors and PSCs have had to verify before appointment or incorporation since 18 November 2025. The transition period is about everyone who was already on the register before that date.

The real deadline is the confirmation statement

For an existing director, the rule is not "by 18 November 2026". It is: verify before the company's next confirmation statement. When the company files its confirmation statement, it has to give the personal code of every director and confirm that each of them is verified.

That has two consequences worth explaining to clients:

  • One unverified director blocks the whole filing. The confirmation statement cannot be submitted until every director has a code. A late confirmation statement is an offence in its own right and can end with the company being struck off.
  • The date depends on the company, not on the person. A client with a confirmation statement date in October has to be verified by October. If they are a director of three companies, the earliest one sets the pace.

For an existing PSC, there is a 14-day window to give Companies House the code:

  • A PSC who is also a director - the 14 days start the day after the company's confirmation statement date.
  • A PSC who is not a director - the first 14 days of the month they were born in (a PSC born in March has 1-14 March).

Everyone has to be through by 18 November 2026.

How to verify

Verification is done once per person, not per company. There are three routes:

  1. GOV.UK One Login - free. Using the GOV.UK ID Check app with a photo ID, or by answering security questions online. For most people it takes a few minutes.
  2. At a Post Office. Enter your photo ID details on GOV.UK One Login, then take the ID to a participating Post Office. Good for clients who are not comfortable with apps.
  3. Through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP). An accountant, solicitor or formation agent registered with Companies House and supervised for anti-money laundering can verify a client's identity for them. ACSPs usually charge for this.

Once verified, the person receives a Companies House personal code - 11 characters, linked to them rather than to any company. They give it to each company they are a director or PSC of. The code is personal: tell clients to share it only with the people filing for them, not to post it in a group chat or forward it around.

What happens if a client misses it

Beyond the blocked confirmation statement, a director who keeps acting without verifying commits an offence, and so does the company. Companies House can issue civil financial penalties and, in serious or repeated cases, prosecute. An unverified person also cannot be appointed as a new director or form a new company until they sort it out. Companies House has said it will focus first on getting people through rather than on penalties - but after 18 November 2026 there is no transition left to lean on.

A checklist for practices

  1. List every limited-company client with its confirmation statement date. Sort by date - everything due between now and mid-November goes to the top.
  2. List every director and PSC on each company, including the ones you never deal with (the silent co-director, the parent who holds 30% of the shares).
  3. Ask each person for their personal code and keep it with the client record, the same way you keep the UTR. If they do not have one, send them the GOV.UK One Login link and the Post Office option in the same message.
  4. Decide whether to offer verification as an ACSP. If you are already AML-supervised, registering as an ACSP lets you verify clients who get stuck with the app, and it is a service clients will happily pay for this autumn.
  5. Diary the PSC windows for PSCs who are not directors - the birth-month rule is easy to miss.
  6. Do not leave the confirmation statement to the last day. If a code turns out to be missing on the day, there is no quick fix.

One more change: accounts filing moves to 2028

Clients may have heard that from April 2027 micro and small companies must file a profit and loss account and use software to file accounts. That timetable has moved: the government has confirmed that these changes now start from 1 April 2028. From then, abridged accounts go, micro-entities and small companies file a profit and loss account, and all accounts - dormant ones included - are filed through commercial software. It is worth correcting the 2027 date in client newsletters now.

Keep the bookkeeping out of the way

Identity verification is exactly the kind of admin that eats a practice's autumn. BookEnu takes the other chasing off your plate: clients send receipts, invoices and bank statements from their phone, AI reads them, and you review and approve before anything reaches the books. See how it works, or apply for early access.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Companies House rules and dates can change - check the current guidance on GOV.UK for each client's situation.