Your Companies House deadline is closer than you think

If you are a company director and the phrase "Companies House personal code" means nothing to you, this one is worth ten minutes.

Identity verification became a mandatory part of UK company law on 18 November 2025, under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. That opened a twelve-month transition period. Companies House estimates that six to seven million people — every director and every person with significant control of a UK company — need to be verified by the time it closes in mid-November 2026.

Its own guidance now records the requirements as legally binding as of 30 July 2026. So this is not a consultation or a plan. It is in force, and there are about ten weeks of the transition left.

The part that catches people out

There is no single national deadline. Yours is personal, and it depends on your role and on dates specific to you.

If you are a director, you supply your personal code with your company's next confirmation statement. That is the trap: confirmation statement dates are scattered across the year, so your deadline might be next month or next spring, and nobody sends you a reminder that says "verify by this date."

If you are a person with significant control but not a director, the window is fourteen days from the start of the month you were born in. That is an unusual rule and an easy one to miss entirely, because nothing else in company administration works that way.

If you are both a director and a PSC, you supply the code separately for each role — once with the confirmation statement, and again within fourteen days of that date for the PSC side. Same code, two filings.

If you became a PSC after 18 November 2025, it is due when you are first added to the register, or within fourteen days.

Overseas companies with a UK establishment work to the anniversary of that establishment's registration instead.

The practical upshot: do not assume that because a colleague or your accountant has sorted theirs, yours is handled. Check your own confirmation statement date on the Companies House register. It takes about thirty seconds and it is public.

How you actually do it

Two routes.

GOV.UK One Login is free and, by Companies House's own account, usually takes minutes. It asks a few questions and then routes you down one of three paths — an app-based check, security questions online, or turning up at a participating Post Office with photo ID. There is no charge at any point.

An Authorised Corporate Service Provider — in practice your accountant or solicitor, if they are registered with Companies House and supervised for anti-money-laundering purposes. They can verify you on your behalf. They may charge for it.

Either way, what you get out the other end is a Companies House personal code. It is worth understanding what that is, because the naming misleads people: the code belongs to you, not to your company. If you are a director of four companies, you verify once and quote the same code in four places. If you resign from one and join another, it travels with you.

What happens if you miss it

Companies House is blunt about it: if you do not comply on time, you are committing an offence. It states there will be "a range of consequences, including a financial penalty," and separately that it will be an offence to act as a director without being verified.

Beyond the penalty, the practical consequences bite sooner. An unverified person cannot make filings and cannot set up new companies. If you have ever needed to file something at Companies House urgently — a share allotment before a funding round, a change of registered office before a deadline — you will recognise how badly that lands at the wrong moment.

The tempering note is that Companies House has said it will "help and support enterprises to comply" and take a proportionate approach to enforcement. That is genuinely reassuring about the first few weeks after a missed date. It is not a reason to leave it.

Why we are writing about this

We are an AI and automation consultancy, and this article contains no AI in it whatsoever. That is deliberate.

This is a good example of the thing that actually costs small businesses money, which is rarely the dramatic stuff. It is a rule that changed quietly, applies to you personally, has a deadline computed from a date you do not have memorised, and arrives with no letter through the door. Nobody is going to chase you. Over a million people had already verified voluntarily before the deadline was even mandatory, which means a large number of people who have not are simply unaware there is anything to do.

Nothing about this needs automating. It needs about fifteen minutes and knowing it exists. But if you run a business of a few people and this one got past you, it is worth asking what else has — the VAT threshold change, the payroll deadline, the insurance renewal that auto-renewed at a worse rate. Those are the ones where a system that watches dates on your behalf earns its keep, and where a person going through your year and writing them all down in one place is usually the first thing worth doing.

Go and check your confirmation statement date. Then come back and worry about the AI.

Sources

• When you need to verify your identity for Companies House — GOV.UK
• Verifying your identity for Companies House — GOV.UK
• Companies House confirms identity verification rollout from 18 November 2025 — GOV.UK
• Identity verification: changes to UK company law — GOV.UK

Checked against the above on 8 September 2026. Rules change; if you are reading this much later, verify the dates before relying on them.