The Companies House ‘Search the register’ website is a free tool that allows you to look up any UK company that appears on the public register. It’s useful for completing background checks on companies and their officers, and can also provide insight on how other people view you and your business.
In this guide, we are going to demonstrate how to effectively use the tool.
How to use Companies House ‘Search the register’ tool
Your starting point should be the main ‘Search the register’ page. From here you can enter the name of the company that you wish to search for.
Alternatively, you can use the ‘Advanced company search’. This is useful if, rather than searching by company name, you want to search by registered office address, incorporation date, company status, nature of business, company type, company subtype, or dissolved date.
For example, you may want to search for any company that is using a specific address as the registered office, or look for companies that were dissolved on a particular date. In each of these situations, it would be appropriate to use the advanced option.
Back on the main ‘Search the register’ page, after you have entered the name that you want to search for and clicked on the magnifying glass icon, you will be presented with a list of companies, officers, and disqualifications (disqualified officers) that wholly or partially match your search.
The company names will be accompanied by the company registration number, incorporation date, and registered office address. This extra information can be useful in helping you ascertain which is the correct company.
Once you have located the company that you want to look into, click on its name.
If you can’t locate the company that you are looking for (the Companies House public register is vast), search using the company registration number instead of the company name. Provided that the business has been registered with Companies House, it will have a number. This should be published on the company’s website, as well as on any invoices.
The company information you can find
The general company page is split into four tabs; ‘Overview’, ‘Filing history’, ‘People’, and ‘More’. Each tab provides different information about the company that you have searched for.
‘Overview’ information
This section comprises general information about the company including the:
- Registered office address
- Company status (for example, ‘Active’ or ‘Dissolved’)
- Company type (for example, ‘Private limited company’ or ‘Private company limited by guarantee without share capital’)
- Incorporated-on date
- Accounts (next accounts made up to date, due by date, the last account made up to date)
- Confirmation statement (next statement date, due by date, last statement date)
- Nature of business (SIC)
‘Filing history’ information
This section lists every document that the company has filed with Companies House in date order, with the most recent filings appearing at the top. For older companies, this can consist of multiple pages. In this instance, we recommend using the filter function that allows you to view documents by category. The categories include:
- Accounts
- Capital
- Charges
- Confirmation statements / Annual returns
- Incorporation
- Officers
For each filing, you will be able to see the document that was filed in full by selecting the ‘View PDF’ (and sometimes ‘Download iXBRL’). This means that if a company has filed accounts, anyone can freely access them.
Precisely what you can view will depend on what a company has filed. This can include documents associated with the below:
- Incorporation (consisting of the certificate of incorporation, IN01 form, and the memorandum of association – if a company has a share capital, share information can be found here)
- Confirmation statement (if the company has made changes to its shareholding information since incorporation, information about this can be found here)
- Company accounts (as this would suggest, financial information can be found here)
- Registered office address updates
- Director updates
- Secretary updates
- People with significant control (PSC) updates
- Share updates
‘People’ Information – Officers
This section names every person and corporate entity associated with the company as an officer – directors, secretaries, and people with significant control (PSCs). Officer information can be found in the ‘Officers’ tab. PSC information can be found in the ‘Persons with significant control’ tab.
For each person named as an officer, you will be able to see their:
- Full name
- Correspondence address (also sometimes referred to as the service address)
- Role (‘Director’ or ‘Secretary’)
- Role status (‘Active’ or ‘Resigned’)
- Date of birth
- Appointed on date
- Resigned on date (if applicable)
- Nationality
- Country of residence
- Occupation
For each corporate entity named as an officer, you will see the:
- Company name
- Correspondence address
- Role
- Role status
- Appointed on date
- Resigned on date (if applicable)
- Company type (for example, UK limited company)
- Company registration number
The name of the officer is clickable. If you click on an officer’s name, you will be presented with a list of other companies that they are associated with, as well as general information about their role in that company.
‘People’ Information – Persons with significant control
For each person named as a PSC, you will be able to see their:
- Full name
- PSC status (‘Active’ or ‘Ceased’)
- Correspondence address
- Notified on date
- Date of birth
- Nationality
- Country of residence
- Nature of control information (for example, ‘Ownership of shares – More than 50% but less than 75%’)
For each corporate entity named as a PSC, you will see the:
- Company name
- PSC status (‘Active’ or ‘Ceased’)
- Correspondence address
- Notified on date
- Governing law (for example, ‘Companies Act 2006’)
- Legal form (for example, ‘Private Company Limited By Shares’)
- Palace registered (for example, ‘Companies House’)
- Company registration number
- Incorporated in location (for example, ‘Scotland’)
- Nature of control information
The ‘People’ section does not include shareholder information. For this, see the relevant documents in the ‘Filing history’ tab.
The ‘More’ tab
This section allows you to:
- Download a snapshot of the company’s information (this is essentially all of the information you can find using the ‘Search the register’ tool, but presented on one page)
- Order a signed certificate of incorporation for the company (for a fee)
- Order a certified document, such as the incorporation documents (for a fee)
Whilst anyone could order a signed certificate of incorporation or certified document, this will generally only be done by someone directly involved with that company, such as a director or shareholder.
The ‘Follow this company’ option
On the general company page (the page presented to you after clicking on the company name), as well as being able to access all of the information covered so far in this guide, you will find two options: ‘Follow this company’ and ‘File for this company’.
The latter is only relevant if your company is your own and you wish to file something for it (remember, if your company is on our system, you can do this through the Online Company Manager). However, the ‘Follow this company’ facility is useful whether the company is yours or not.
By clicking this button, you will be notified via email whenever the company files anything with Companies House (you will need a WebFiling account).
This is handy for monitoring your competition and any other companies you’re interested in. However, it can also be a useful security measure if you follow your own company, as you’ll be notified if someone makes a fraudulent update to your company, allowing you to act quickly to fix the issue.
Using the ‘Search the register’ tool to find officers
If you’re more interested in an individual rather than a company, you’ll be pleased to read that the ‘Search the register’ tool also allows you to search by a person’s name.
To do this, from the main ‘Search the register’ page, enter the name of the person that you’re interested in and click on the magnifying glass icon.
You will then be presented with a list of results that match your search query. You can refine this list by selecting the ‘Officers’ option. This will ensure all company names that match the term are removed from your results, leaving only people.
Names are rarely unique. To find the correct person, you will need to look at the correspondence address. This is further complicated by the fact that a person can be listed more than once on the register.
Generally, this is because of variations in their name. For example, if a person chose not to use their middle name(s) when being appointed to ‘Company A’, but then used it when being appointed to ‘Company B’, they would have more than one listing.
Because of this, we recommend completing searches with and without middle names (if you know them), and again, paying attention to the date of birth.
Once you have found the correct listing(s), click the name to see more information.
You will then see the following information for the individual in question:
- Full name
- Total number of appointments held (you can toggle the settings so you only see ‘Current appointments’ or all appointments)
- Date of birth
You are then presented with the below information about the person and the companies they are associated with:
- Company name
- Company status
- Correspondence address
- Role
- Role status
- Appointed on date
- Resigned on date (if applicable)
- Nationality
- Country of residence
- Occupation
The company name is clickable. If you click on a company name, you will be directed to that company’s general page.
So there you have it
That was a guide to using the Companies House ‘Search the register’ website. As shown in this article, the tool is an excellent resource for finding large amounts of information about companies and the individuals within them, for free.
Get in the habit of using it for due diligence purposes whenever you enter into a new business relationship, whether it’s with a potential customer, client, supplier, or partner. Additionally, check on your own company regularly for insight into how other people view you and your business.
We hope you have found this guide useful. Please leave a comment if you have any questions and we’ll be happy to help. Thanks for reading.