Companies House identity verification — what every UK director needs to do now

If you incorporated a UK limited company in the last decade, the deal was simple: pay £12, fill in a form, and Companies House would barely glance at who you said you were. That deal is over. Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA), every director and every Person with Significant Control now has to prove they are a real human being — to Companies House directly or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider.

We get a version of the same email every week: "I just got a letter mentioning identity verification and I have no idea if it applies to me, when I have to do it, or what happens if I miss the deadline." If that's you, this post is the plain-English version of the answer.

Why this is happening at all

Companies House has, for most of its history, been a filing cabinet, not a regulator. Anyone could form a company in any name, list any address, and appoint any "director" — and the registrar had no statutory power to push back. The result was tens of thousands of shell companies used for fraud, sanctions evasion, and money laundering, with the government's own estimates putting the cost to the UK economy in the hundreds of billions of pounds.

ECCTA is the response. The headline change most founders care about is identity verification (IDV): a one-time check that confirms the person behind a director or PSC role is who they claim to be. It's the foundation everything else in the reform sits on — without verified identities, the new fraud powers, the cleaner register, and the tighter address rules don't really work.

Who actually needs to verify

The rule is broader than people think. You need to complete identity verification if you are:

• A director of a UK limited company — existing directors and anyone newly appointed.
• A Person with Significant Control (PSC) — typically anyone owning more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercises significant control.
• A member of an LLP, in the equivalent role.
• Anyone filing on behalf of a company who is not going through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider — for example, a director filing their own confirmation statement.

If you're a sole shareholder-director of a one-person company, congratulations: you're probably wearing all three hats and the verification still only needs to happen once per person, not once per role.

What the verification actually involves

There are two routes, and they lead to the same place — a verified status attached to your personal Companies House identity.

1. Direct with Companies House via the GOV.UK One Login service. You'll need a photo ID (passport, UK driving licence, or biometric residence permit), a smartphone to scan it, and a few minutes for a liveness check.
2. Through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP) — a regulated firm that has been approved by Companies House to verify identities on its behalf. ACSPs use the same underlying standards but bundle verification with the rest of your filings, so you don't have to juggle multiple logins and reference numbers.

Either way, the check is built around three things: a genuine government-issued ID, a biometric match between your face and the photo on that ID, and a record that ties the verified identity to your Companies House profile so you never have to repeat it.

The deadlines nobody is talking about loudly enough

Here's the part that catches people out. Identity verification isn't a single "switch on" date — it's being phased in. In broad strokes:

• New incorporations: every proposed director and PSC must already be verified before a company can be registered. If even one person isn't, the incorporation is rejected.
• Existing directors and PSCs: verification is being rolled in alongside the confirmation statement cycle. When your next confirmation statement is due, every director and PSC on the company needs a verified status before you can file.
• New appointments: a director appointed after the IDV rules apply to their company must be verified before the appointment is filed, not after.

Miss the window and the consequences aren't theoretical. Companies House can refuse to accept filings, apply financial penalties, and — in serious cases — annotate the register or pursue criminal sanctions for filing as an unverified person. None of that is a good look on a credit check or a due-diligence report.

The mistakes we see most often

After helping hundreds of founders through this, the same handful of issues come up again and again:

• Using a name on the register that doesn't match the photo ID. "Dave Smith" on Companies House but "David John Smith" on the passport will fail the check. Update the register first, verify second.
• Forgetting non-UK directors. A director living in Lagos or Lisbon still has to verify. The route is the same; the photo ID just needs to be on the accepted list.
• Verifying the company instead of the person. IDV is tied to you, not your business. One verification covers every directorship and PSC role you'll ever hold.
• Leaving it until the confirmation statement is overdue. Verification can take a few minutes — but only if your documents are in order. Trying to do it the night before a filing deadline is how avoidable late-filing penalties happen.
• Assuming an accountant will handle it. Most accountants aren't ACSPs. They can prepare your numbers, but they can't verify your identity for Companies House unless they've been specifically authorised.

How Filing HQ fits in

We built our PSC verification service and our identity verification service for exactly this moment. The goal is simple: take the ECCTA rulebook off your desk and give you a verified status without you having to learn what an ACSP is.

In practice that means:

• A guided check that walks you through ID capture and liveness in a few minutes from your phone.
• A pre-flight review of your Companies House record so the name, date of birth, and address on the register match the documents you're about to upload.
• One verified identity that covers every director and PSC role you hold, across every company.
• A reminder system tied to your confirmation statement date, so the verification window never sneaks up on you.

If you're forming a new company, IDV is already baked into our formation packages — your directors and PSCs are verified as part of the incorporation, not as an awkward second step. If you already have a live company, we can verify the people on it now and then handle your next confirmation statement at the same time, so the whole compliance cycle gets cleared in one sitting.

The bigger picture

It's tempting to treat identity verification as one more box to tick, but it's worth zooming out for a moment. The UK register is becoming something it has never been before: a register you can actually trust. For honest founders, that's a quiet upgrade. Banks open accounts faster against verified directors. Investors run cleaner due diligence. Suppliers extend credit with less friction. The cost is fifteen minutes of your time and a willingness to point a phone camera at your passport.

The cost of ignoring it, on the other hand, is a blocked confirmation statement, a frozen filing, and a register entry that quietly tells the world your company doesn't have its house in order.

What to do this week

If you take nothing else from this post, do these three things:

1. Check your Companies House record. Make sure the name and date of birth on every director and PSC matches a current photo ID exactly.
2. Find your next confirmation statement date. That's your real deadline — not some abstract ECCTA milestone.
3. Verify, or get verified. Either through GOV.UK One Login directly, or through an ACSP like Filing HQ that can roll it into the rest of your filings.

Identity verification isn't going away, and the people who handle it calmly in a quiet week will be very glad they didn't leave it for a noisy one.