Companies House Identity Verification: What Every UK Director Must Do Before the Deadline

I had a conversation in the spring with a founder in Leeds who was unable to complete a funding drawdown. The lender had asked for a clean Companies House record as a condition precedent — standard stuff — and the company could not file its confirmation statement. One of the three directors, a non-executive who lived in Spain and rarely engaged with the admin, had not completed Companies House identity verification. Until he did, the filing was blocked. Until the filing went through, the record was not clean. The drawdown slipped by five weeks.

Here is the uncomfortable truth that most guidance on this subject soft-pedals: Companies House identity verification is being written about as a compliance chore, and it is not. It is a filing blocker. An unverified director does not just create a personal problem for themselves; they freeze the entire company’s ability to file anything at all, and that freeze lands on whatever you happen to be doing at the time. In my experience, the businesses that get hurt by this are not the ones ignoring the rules. They are the ones who assumed a November 2026 deadline gave them time, when their actual deadline was months earlier and tied to a filing date nobody had checked.

This article sets out who must verify, what your real deadline is as opposed to the headline one, the three routes available and what each costs, the consequences of missing it, and the specific reason this matters more than usual if you are raising finance in the next twelve months. I have written it for directors and owner-managers of UK limited companies and LLP members, not for company secretaries who already know this material.

Why This Matters Commercially, Not Just Legally

Companies House estimates that between six and seven million individuals are affected by identity verification [1]. That is not a niche compliance population. That is essentially every person who runs, owns or controls a UK company.

The change comes from the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, and the policy intent is straightforward. For decades, becoming a UK company director required little more than submitting a name and an address, with no check to verify either. The register was open, and that openness was exploited. Companies House now has the power and the mandate to confirm that the people setting up and running UK companies are who they say they are.

The commercial consequence is what founders miss. Your Companies House record is not a private administrative matter. It is the first thing a lender’s credit team looks at, the first thing an investor’s lawyer pulls in due diligence, and the first thing a corporate customer’s procurement function checks before signing a contract of any size. A company that cannot file, or that carries a flagged or overdue filing history, looks like a company with problems. Nobody funding you will ask whether the cause was a genuine risk indicator or an overseas director who did not open his post. The signal reads the same either way.

In the funding work I do at SGI, document readiness is one of the most common reasons a process stalls, and it is almost always avoidable. A director verification that takes fifteen minutes online can hold up a facility for a month if it is discovered at the wrong point in a transaction. The fix costs nothing. The delay costs a great deal.

Who Must Verify Their Identity

The requirement applies to three groups as at the current phase of the rollout [1]:

• All company directors, both new appointments and those already in post
• All people with significant control, usually anyone holding more than 25 per cent of shares or voting rights, or otherwise exercising significant influence
• All members of a limited liability partnership

Note the overlap. A typical owner-managed company has one person who is both a director and a PSC, and that person has two separate obligations, each with its own deadline. Verifying once is enough to establish your identity, but you then have to connect that verified identity to each role and each company separately. I will come back to this because it is where most people trip up.

Companies House has confirmed that identity verification will extend to people who file at Companies House from no earlier than November 2027, with at least six months’ notice before that requirement takes effect [1]. Identity verification for limited partnerships, corporate directors, corporate LLP members and officers of corporate PSCs will follow at a later date. If you sit in one of those categories, the requirement is coming but is not yet live.

There is one important structural point for anyone with a holding company. Where a corporate body meets the PSC criteria, for example, a holding company controlling a trading subsidiary, the verification rules are focused on natural persons, so the regime requires the appointment of a named individual as a relevant officer whose identity is verified [2]. If your group structure has corporate PSCs, this is worth raising with your accountant now rather than discovering it at a filing deadline.

Your Real Deadline Is Almost Certainly Not November 2026

This is the single most misunderstood element of the whole regime, and it is why I have seen otherwise well-run companies get caught out.

Identity verification became a legal requirement on 18 November 2025. That date marks the start of a 12-month transition period, not a deadline [1]. The transition ends on 18 November 2026, which is the backstop for existing directors and PSCs. But almost nobody’s actual deadline is that date, because the transition is governed by filing triggers rather than a single cut-off date.

Here is how the deadlines actually work.

Two features of this catch people out.

The PSC birth month rule runs from the first of the month, not from your birthday. If your date of birth is 24 April, your window is 1 to 14 April, not the fortnight after the 24th [2]. I have seen this misread more than once, and the consequence is missing a statutory deadline by three weeks while believing you are early.

If you hold directorships in multiple companies, your effective deadline is the earliest confirmation statement date among them. You verify your identity only once, and the personal code you receive works everywhere, but the trigger that requires it is whichever company files first [3]. A director of four companies with confirmation statement dates in December, February, May and September has a December deadline, not a September one.

The practical instruction is simple. Do not work from the November 2026 date. Go to the Companies House register, look up your company or companies, find the confirmation statement due date for each, and work backwards from the earliest one. That is your deadline. If you are also a PSC, note your birth month window separately.

The Three Routes to Verification, and What Each Costs

There are three ways to verify, and they are not equivalent in speed, cost or the documents they accept.

Route one: GOV.UK One Login, direct and free

You sign in or create a GOV.Use a UK One Login account and the Verify your identity for Companies House service [1]. You will be asked to submit identification documents. A UK photocard driving licence or a biometric passport is typically accepted, and when the documents are in order, the process takes minutes rather than days. This route is free.

Once verified, your personal code is visible immediately in the Manage account section of your Companies House account. Note that you must sign in with the same email address you used to verify, a small detail that causes a surprising amount of confusion later.

For a UK-resident director with a current biometric passport or photocard licence, this is the route to take. It is free, fast, and puts the code directly into an account you control.

Route two: Post Office, in person and free

If you do not have a smartphone or biometric ID, you can complete verification in person at a participating Post Office as part of the same GOV.UK One Login process. You start online to obtain a reference code, then take that code and your identity documents to the Post Office. Companies House sends your personal code to your personal email address, usually within one working day. This route is also free.

Route three: an Authorised Corporate Service Provider

An Authorised Corporate Service Provider, also called an authorised agent, is a firm supervised for anti-money laundering purposes that has registered with Companies House to carry out identity checks. In practice, this means accountants, solicitors, company formation agents, and chartered secretaries [1]. ACSPs must meet the same standard of assurance as verification done directly with Companies House, and Companies House operates a compliance policy with powers to carry out random checks on the data ACSPs provide, suspending or ceasing those that fall short [4].

ACSPs charge for the service and set their own fees. Published market rates range from roughly £100 to £150 per person, though your existing accountant may already offer it and hold your identity documents, which can speed up the process.

The ACSP route matters most in two situations. It accepts a broader range of identity documents than GOV.UK One Login works from any country, making it the practical option for overseas directors without a UK photocard licence or biometric passport. And when you have several officers to verify, particularly across multiple companies, having one firm manage the process end-to-end removes the coordination risk that causes most of the missed deadlines I see.

What you get: the personal code

Whichever route you take, verification produces an 11-character personal code. The code belongs to you as an individual, not to your company or your accountant. You verify once and receive a code, which is then used to link your verified identity to each of your roles across every entity you are involved with.

If you verified through an ACSP, the code is emailed to the address the ACSP provided. My strong advice is to save it to your own Companies House account immediately. If you do not, and you later change accountants, you lose easy access to your own code and have to go back to a firm you no longer work with. Save it, and keep it somewhere you will find it in eighteen months.

What Happens If You Miss It

There are two layers of consequence, and the first one bites well before the second.

The immediate consequence is that filings stop. An unverified director blocks the company’s confirmation statement. That is not a warning or a flag; it is a hard block. And failing to file a confirmation statement is itself an offence, entirely separate from the verification requirement, carrying financial penalties and the risk of the company being struck off the register. So, a director who has not verified commits an immediate offence for the company, even during the transition period.

The second layer is the enforcement regime proper. Companies House has published guidance on its approach to non-compliance, and enforcement is risk-based. Continuing to act without verification may result in a referral to the Insolvency Service, and where there is evidence of aggravated, fraudulent or criminal conduct, Companies House may share information with law enforcement agencies [5]. Failing to comply with identity verification requirements on time is an offence, with consequences including a financial penalty and the inability to file for your company or start a new one [1].

Companies House also has the power to annotate the public register. A company whose directors appear as unverified is visible as such to anyone who looks, and the people who look are exactly the ones whose opinions matter commercially: banks, investors, and prospective customers running supplier checks.

One legal nuance worth knowing. Individuals are prohibited from acting as a director if their identity has not been verified, but acting in breach of this does not invalidate the acts they carry out as a director [6]. The company’s contracts do not unravel. The prohibition is nonetheless real, and a director should not act in that capacity until verified.

The Funding Angle Nobody Mentions

This is where I would push back on how this topic is usually covered, because the standard treatment is a compliance checklist that stops there.

If you are planning to raise finance in the next twelve months, whether that is a bank facility, an asset finance line, a grant application, or an equity round, your Companies House record is part of your funding readiness and is being assessed, whether you think about it that way or not.

When a lender’s credit team reviews a proposition, filing history is one of the earliest and cheapest signals they look at. It costs them nothing to pull. Late accounts, overdue confirmation statements and register annotations are read as governance weakness, and governance weakness is one of the recurring reasons applications fail at the point where a human decides whether to progress them. I have written elsewhere about why start-up loan applications get declined, and the pattern holds across funding types: the technical merits of the business rarely fail first. The evidence that the business is properly run fails first.

For equity, the exposure is sharper still. Investor due diligence will pull the full Companies House record, and a PSC register that does not reconcile with the cap table, or officers showing as unverified, will generate precisely the kind of question you do not want in the first week of diligence. If you want to see what a well-organised process entails, the investor due diligence preparation checklist sets out the broader document requirements.

Take a worked illustration using the published deadline rules. A company with a confirmation statement due 30 June has a sole director who is also the PSC. She must verify and provide her personal code with the confirmation statement by 30 June, and separately confirm her PSC verification within 14 days of 1 July. If she verifies in late May, she has more than a month of margin on both. If she leaves it until the last week of June and runs into a documentation issue, for example, an expired passport, she has no margin at all, and the company’s filing will be late. The difference between those two outcomes is a decision made five weeks earlier about when to deal with it.

Common Mistakes

Treating 18 November 2026 as the deadline. It is the backstop, not the deadline. Your real date is set by your earliest confirmation statement. Companies that plan to the backstop will miss their actual trigger.

Assuming one verification covers everything automatically. You verify your identity once and receive a single code, but you must provide that code separately for each role and each company. A person who is both director and PSC of the same company has two separate submissions to make on two different timetables.

Reading the PSC birth month rule as running from the birthday. It runs from the first day of your birth month. Getting this wrong costs you up to three weeks of what you thought was margin.

Leaving overseas directors until last. They are the hardest to verify because GOV.UK One Login is built around UK documents. Non-resident directors should be started first, not last, and usually through an ACSP.

Not saving the personal code to your own Companies House account. If your accountant verified you and has the code in their email, you have a dependency you don’t need. Save it to your own account on the day you receive it.

Forgetting dormant and holding companies. Directors of dormant entities have exactly the same obligation, and dormant companies still file confirmation statements. These are the entities nobody thinks about until the filing bounces.

Implementation: What to Do This Week

Phase one: establish your actual deadlines.

1. List every UK company and LLP in which you are a director, PSC, or member. Include dormant and holding entities.
2. For each, look up the confirmation statement due date on the Companies House register.
3. Identify the earliest date among them. That is your effective director deadline.
4. If you are a PSC anywhere, note your birth month and mark the 1st to 14th of that month as a separate deadline.

Phase two: verify.

5. If you hold a current biometric passport or UK photocard driving licence, use GOV.UK One Login. Allow fifteen minutes.
6. If you do not, either book the Post Office route or instruct an ACSP. Budget roughly £100-£150 per person for an ACSP, and start earlier.
7. For any overseas director or PSC, go straight to an ACSP. Start with these, not last.

Phase three: connect and record.

8. Save your personal code to your Companies House account, regardless of the route you used.
9. Provide the code for your director role through the confirmation statement.
10. Submit the separate PSC verification within the relevant 14-day window.
11. Record every code and every deadline in one place that your accountant and your co-directors can access.

Phase four: cover the rest of the board.

12. Confirm in writing that every other director, PSC and LLP member has verified and has their code recorded.
13. Where anyone has not, set a named owner and a date. Do not assume it is being handled.

That list takes an afternoon for a typical owner-managed company. Left undone, it takes five weeks out of a funding process at the worst possible moment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to verify separately for every company I am a director of? No. You verify your identity once and receive one personal code that works everywhere. However, you must provide that code separately for each company and each role. So a director of four companies verifies once but makes four submissions, each tied to that company’s confirmation statement date.

What is the difference between the director deadline and the PSC deadline? They are separate obligations with separate timetables. As a director, your code is included in the company’s confirmation statement. As a PSC who is also a director of the same company, you have an additional 14 days starting the day after the confirmation statement date. As a PSC who is not a director of that company, your window is the first 14 days of your month of birth.

Is Companies House identity verification free? The two direct routes are free. GOV.UK One Login costs nothing, and Post Office verification as part of that process also costs nothing. Verification through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider is a professional service, and the provider sets its own fee, with published market rates typically around £100 to £150 per person.

I am an overseas director without a UK passport or driving licence. What are my options? Use an Authorised Corporate Service Provider. That route accepts a broader range of identity documents than GOV does.UK One Login works from any country. Start the process earlier than a UK-based colleague would, because verifying non-UK identity documents takes longer.

Can my accountant verify my identity for me? An accountant registered as an ACSP can carry out the identity check on your behalf using their authorised status, but the verification remains yours, and the issued personal code belongs to you, not to them. You cannot delegate the identity itself, only the checking process.

What happens to my company if one director does not verify? The company cannot file its confirmation statement. Failing to file a confirmation statement is an offence in its own right, carrying financial penalties and the risk of strike-off, and this consequence applies immediately rather than waiting for the end of the transition period. One unverified director therefore creates an exposure for every other officer of that company.

Does this affect my ability to raise funding? Indirectly but materially. Lenders and investors check the Companies House record early and cheaply, and overdue filings or unverified officers read as governance weakness at exactly the point where a human decides whether to progress your application. Verification itself is not a funding criterion, but a blocked filing is a visible problem on a record that funders do look at.

The Principle Underneath This

The register is becoming a real record rather than a self-declared one, and that changes what it signals. For years a clean Companies House file said very little, because nobody had checked anything. From now on it says that identifiable people are accountable for this company, and the absence of that becomes conspicuous.

That shift favours businesses that treat their statutory record as part of how they present themselves commercially, rather than as an annual irritation handled by whoever has time. The founders I work with who raise successfully tend to be the ones for whom this is already true. Their filings are current, their PSC register reconciles with their cap table, and when a funder pulls the record, it confirms what the business plan claims rather than raising questions.

Fifteen minutes now, or five weeks at the worst possible moment. That is genuinely the whole choice.

Get Your Funding Readiness Right Before You Need It

Identity verification is one item on a much longer list of things funders check before they check the things you expect them to check. If you are planning to raise in the next 12 months, the time to identify gaps is now, not during due diligence.

SGI Consultants works with UK founders and SME owner-managers on funding readiness across debt, equity and grant routes. Over 12 years of practice, we have advised 2,000-plus businesses across 47-plus sectors and secured more than £250M in client funding, with a 90 per cent success rate, compared with an industry average of 13 to 20 per cent. A large part of that gap is unglamorous preparation of exactly this kind.

Start with the SGI funding readiness assessment to see where your business stands, or book a funding route call at sgi.youcanbook.me to talk through your position directly. If you want the wider picture first, the complete UK business funding guide covers every route open to a UK business and what each one requires.

SGI Consultants Ltd is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We provide funding facilitation for companies raising capital outside the consumer credit perimeter and work with FCA-authorised partners for any regulated elements. This article is general guidance on company law compliance and is not legal advice. Confirm your position with Companies House or a qualified adviser before acting.

References

1. Companies House, Identity verification, Changes to UK company law campaign site, updated August 2026. https://changestoukcompanylaw.campaign.gov.uk/identity-verification/
2. Gilson Gray, ID Verification at Companies House, March 2026. https://gilsongray.co.uk/insights/id-verification-at-companies-house/
3. George Hay Chartered Accountants, Companies House ID Verification: Practical tips to help you prepare, March 2026. https://www.georgehay.co.uk/latest-news/companies-house-id-verification-practical-tips-to-help-you-prepare/
4. Companies House, Using a third-party provider to verify your identity with Companies House, Companies House blog, December 2025. https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2025/12/11/using-a-third-party-provider-to-verify-your-identity-with-companies-house/
5. Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, Companies House approach to enforcement of identity verification compliance, 2026. https://www.icas.com/news-insights-events/news/practice/companies-house-approach-to-enforcement-of-identity-verification-compliance
6. Winston Taylor, Guide to identity verification: how and when to verify your identity for Companies House, 2026. https://www.winstontaylor.com/insights/guide-to-identity-verification-how-and-when-to-verify-your-identity-for-companies-house
7. Companies House, Companies House personal codes for identity verification, GOV.UK guidance. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/companies-house-personal-codes-for-identity-verification

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Kurt Graver

Kurt Graver is the founder and CEO of SGI Consultants, a business consultancy that has helped over 2,000 entrepreneurs establish successful startups using systematic business development methodologies. An accountant with an MBA and 25 years of commerce and consultancy experience, Kurt specialises in strategic planning, market analysis, and sustainable business growth