What a Verified Companies House Record Will Show

The UK is changing what it means to appear on the Companies House register. Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, every company director and every person with significant control will have to verify their identity before their name can sit on the public record.

Verification is done once, through a government identity check or an authorised provider, and produces a personal code tied to the individual. From late 2025 it becomes mandatory for new appointments, with a transition period through 2026 for those already in post. The register stops being a list of names anyone can assert and becomes a list of names that have been checked.

Two things follow for a private person. The first is that the link between an individual and the entities they control becomes harder to obscure and easier to confirm, because the verified name ties the records together. The second, less noticed, is that the grounds for keeping a residential address or other personal detail off the public version have been widened, for those who know to ask.

The work is to know, before the deadline arrives, exactly what the verified record will join up and disclose, and to use the suppression that is available where it genuinely applies.