Companies House

Companies House is the official registrar of companies for the United Kingdom, an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade. Every limited company, limited liability partnership (LLP) and a range of other corporate bodies must be incorporated with Companies House and, once registered, must keep their information up to date by filing statutory documents.

The register it maintains is public by law. Anyone can look up a company’s registered office, its directors and secretaries, its filing history, its accounts and its confirmation statements without paying a fee or giving a reason. This openness is a deliberate feature of UK company law: limited liability is a privilege granted in exchange for transparency about who runs a company and how it is doing.

Companies House does not verify the commercial claims a company makes, assess whether it is a good business to deal with, or act as a credit reference agency. It records what companies file. That distinction matters when you use the data: an active status means the company exists on the register and has met its filing obligations, not that it is trading successfully.

Example

When “ACME TRADING LTD” is incorporated, Companies House issues it a unique company number (e.g. 12345678), records its registered office and first directors, and from then on publishes every document the company files — accounts, confirmation statements, changes of director — on the public register.

On Company Shark

Every company profile on Company Shark is built from the live Companies House register. We index and cross-link that public data so you can search, filter and export it; the source record for any company is always linked at the foot of its profile page.

Related

• Company number
• Registered office
• Confirmation statement
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