Companies House Checks Explained

Q: Does Companies House show CCJs or insolvency?

Insolvency yes — liquidation, administration or receivership appears in the filing history. CCJs no — those are held by Registry Trust on the Register of Judgments and are one of the most common gaps in DIY due diligence.

Q: Can I rely on the SIC codes to understand what a company does?

Not really. SIC codes are self-declared at incorporation and rarely updated. Many companies carry codes from a business they no longer operate. Read the website and strategic report for what the company actually does.

Q: How far back does Companies House history go?

Digital filing history typically goes back to incorporation for active companies, with scanned images covering anything filed since the late 1990s. Dissolved-company records are retained for 20 years before transfer to the National Archives.

What Companies House filings reveal about a supplier — accounts, confirmation statements, charges, officers and PSC.

Companies House is the public register of UK companies, and it's the first place to look when you're vetting a supplier. The filings tell you who owns and runs the company, whether they're filing on time, what they've borrowed against, and a coarse picture of their balance sheet. They don't tell you whether the company pays its bills, whether the bank is about to pull the facility, or whether the founder is quietly looking for the exit.

This guide walks through what each Companies House filing actually contains, what you can reasonably infer, and where the data runs out.

TL;DR

Companies House filings are free, public, and machine-readable via the Companies House API.
The most load-bearing documents are the annual accounts, the confirmation statement, the PSC register, the charges register, and the officer history.
Small companies file abridged accounts that legally omit the profit and loss — you see assets and liabilities, not turnover or margin. Most SME suppliers fall into this bucket.
A late filing is one of the clearest signals worth chasing. It's rarely innocent and often precedes worse news.
Charges show you who has security over the company's assets — usually the bank, sometimes an invoice financier. The order of registration matters.
Companies House tells you nothing about payment behaviour, current cash position, live disputes, or reputation. For those you need the Department for Business and Trade payment-practices register, court records, and press.
For a contract worth more than a few thousand pounds, Companies House is a starting point, not the whole picture.

How do I find a company on Companies House?

Search by name or company number at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. The company number is the more reliable handle — names get reused, traded, and re-registered, and "Ltd" versus "Limited" trips up search.

Once you're on the company page you'll see the registered office, incorporation date, SIC codes (industry classification, frequently wrong or stale), accounts status, confirmation statement status, and tabs for filing history, people, and charges. Everything is free to view. The full filing PDFs are free to download. If you're checking more than a handful of suppliers a month, the Companies House API returns the same data as JSON and the rate limits are generous.

A few practical notes. The registered office is often an accountant's address, not where the business operates — don't read too much into a tiny office in Reading for a company that trades nationally. Trading names aren't on Companies House at all; the legal entity name is what you'll find. If a supplier has given you a trading name only, ask for the registered entity name and number before you go further.

What do annual accounts actually show?

The annual accounts are the supplier's balance sheet as at the year-end, plus (sometimes) the profit and loss for the year. What's in them depends on the company's size classification.

A micro-entity (turnover under £632k, balance sheet under £316k, fewer than 10 employees) files barely anything: a one-page balance sheet, a couple of notes, no profit and loss. You can see net assets and the rough shape of debtors and creditors, and that's it.

A small company (turnover under £10.2m, balance sheet under £5.1m, fewer than 50 employees) files abridged accounts: a slightly more detailed balance sheet, some notes, still no profit and loss filed publicly. This covers most of the suppliers in the UK economy. You can compute crude liquidity ratios from the balance sheet, you can see net assets and how they've moved year on year, but you cannot see turnover, gross margin, or operating profit. If a small-company supplier won't share management accounts on request, you're working with a partial picture.

A medium or large company files full accounts with a profit and loss, directors' report, and (for the largest) a strategic report and auditor's opinion. This is where the data gets useful: turnover, cost of sales, operating profit, exceptional items, segment splits if disclosed. An audit qualification or an "emphasis of matter" paragraph in the auditor's report deserves a read.

A few things to look for regardless of size: the auditor's name and whether it changed recently, the date the accounts were signed (a long gap between year-end and signing can signal trouble), and any related-party transactions disclosed in the notes. Related-party flows — money moving between the trading company, a parent, and a director's other interests — are the single most common red flag we see that doesn't show up anywhere else.

For a structured walkthrough of the warning signs, see red flags in supplier financials.

What does the confirmation statement tell me?

The confirmation statement is an annual filing that confirms the basics — registered office, officers, PSCs, share capital, SIC codes — are still correct. It's a low-effort form. Filing it late, or not at all, is one of the more telling signals on the whole register.

A confirmation statement is due every year on the anniversary of incorporation (or the previous filing). Companies have 14 days from the due date to file. If it's overdue, Companies House will eventually move to strike the company off the register — you'll see a "first gazette notice of compulsory strike-off" in the filing history, and a "discontinued" or "active proposal to strike off" status. A strike-off action that's been suspended (often because a creditor objected) is worth a closer look — it means somebody is owed money and is fighting to keep the company alive long enough to collect.

A late confirmation statement on its own isn't always damning — small companies forget, accountants change — but combined with late accounts it's a strong signal that nobody is minding the shop. Two consecutive late filings on a company you're about to award a six-figure contract to is a conversation worth having before signature.

What is the PSC register and what does it show?

The PSC register lists persons with significant control — broadly, anyone who owns more than 25% of the shares, holds more than 25% of the voting rights, has the right to appoint or remove a majority of directors, or otherwise exercises significant influence. It's the closest thing Companies House has to a beneficial-ownership register.

For most SMEs the PSC is the founder or a small group of founders. For companies inside a group, the PSC is usually the immediate parent (a "relevant legal entity"), and you have to walk up the chain to find a natural person. For private equity-backed businesses the PSC chain often ends at an LLP or a Jersey entity, which is legal but tells you the ultimate ownership isn't on the UK register.

What to look for: PSC changes that don't line up with the announced ownership story, recent additions of a PSC who is also a director of a company in difficulty, or a "no PSC" declaration on a company that clearly has owners (which is sometimes a paperwork lag and sometimes deliberate obfuscation). PSC data is self-declared and not verified by Companies House — treat it as a starting point, not the final word.

How do I read the charges register?

The charges register lists security interests registered against the company's assets — typically debentures (general security over all assets) granted to a bank or invoice financier, plus the occasional fixed charge over a specific property or piece of plant.

Each entry shows the date the charge was created, the date it was registered (which must be within 21 days), the holder, and a short description. A satisfied charge has been paid off and is marked as such; an outstanding charge is still live.

What to read from this. A single outstanding debenture to a high-street bank is normal — it secures the overdraft and is the cost of doing business. Multiple outstanding charges to invoice financiers, asset-based lenders, or non-bank funders suggest the company has been stretching for working capital. A recent charge to a director or a connected party is one of the few signals of distress that's visible before insolvency — directors taking security positions over their own companies is what people do when they expect a fight over the assets.

The order matters. The first registered charge generally ranks first on the assets in an insolvency. If you're a trade creditor, you're behind every secured creditor on the register.

What does the officer history tell me?

The officers tab shows current and resigned directors and secretaries, with appointment and resignation dates. Click through to any director and you see every UK company they've been an officer of, current and former.

This is where you check for director churn (a board that has turned over twice in two years is a problem), recent resignations (a CFO leaving three months before a contract signature is worth a question), and prior company failures (a pattern of directors leaving companies that subsequently entered insolvency is the textbook phoenixing pattern).

Companies House does not flag disqualifications directly on the officer page — the disqualified directors register is separate, and you have to search it by name. We cover the full method in director history checks.

What can Companies House NOT tell me?

A lot, and it's worth being explicit about it.

Payment behaviour. Whether the company pays its own suppliers on time is on the DBT payment practices register, not Companies House. Large companies (over two of: £36m turnover, £18m balance sheet, 250 employees) have to report twice a year. Smaller suppliers don't report at all.
Current cash position. The accounts are a year-end snapshot, filed up to nine months after the year-end. By the time you read them they can be 21 months out of date.
Live court action. County Court Judgments are on the Registry Trust, not Companies House. Winding-up petitions appear in the Gazette before they appear on the Companies House filing history.
Customer concentration. Not disclosed for small or medium companies. Sometimes hinted at in the strategic report of larger ones.
Real-time anything. Companies House is a register of filings, not a monitoring service. There's a lag between an event happening and the filing appearing.
Reputation, disputes, sentiment. Not its job. You need press, reviews, and trade-body sources for any of that.

For the full method we use to combine Companies House with the sources above, see how we check a supplier.

Should I check Companies House myself or pay for a report?

For a single supplier on a small contract, doing it yourself is reasonable — the data is free and an hour of careful reading will get you most of the way. The trade-off is that "careful reading" is the load-bearing word. Knowing which late filing matters, which related-party note is benign and which isn't, and how to read a balance sheet against a sector benchmark is the part that takes practice.

For anything material — a logistics contract that becomes load-bearing in your supply chain, an IT services supplier with access to your systems, a recruitment agency placing temps on your sites — it's worth either building the in-house muscle to read filings properly or commissioning a report. Vendrpulse Pulse (£25) gives you a scored read of Companies House, director history, insolvency signals and sentiment on a named UK supplier, reviewed by an analyst; Pulse Premium (£500) extends it with deeper sector-specific checks and a full written assessment.

If you want to see the output before deciding, request a free sample report — pick the vertical closest to your use case and we'll email a redacted PDF.

FAQ

Are Companies House filings really free?

Yes. The full register, all filing PDFs, the search interface and the API are free to use. Companies House recovers cost through filing fees, not access fees. There are paid resellers who repackage the same data with better search and visualisation, but the underlying filings are public.

How current are Companies House filings?

The register is current as a record of what has been filed — usually within a day of Companies House accepting a submission. The filings themselves can be a long way out of date. Annual accounts are due nine months after a private company's year-end, and most companies file close to the deadline, so the financial data you read can easily be 12–21 months old.

What's the difference between abridged and full accounts?

Abridged accounts (filed by small companies) include the balance sheet and limited notes, but omit the profit and loss account and the directors' report. Full accounts include everything — turnover, costs, profit, segment information where relevant, and an auditor's opinion if the company is audited. The size thresholds are set out in the Companies Act 2006.

Does Companies House show CCJs or insolvency?

Insolvency yes — a liquidation, administration, or receivership appears in the filing history once the relevant notices are filed. CCJs no — those are held on the Register of Judgments by Registry Trust. A County Court Judgment against the supplier won't show up in a Companies House search, which is one of the most common gaps in DIY due diligence. See what is a CCJ for the full picture.

Can I rely on the SIC codes to understand what a company does?

Not really. SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) codes are self-declared at incorporation and rarely updated. Many companies carry codes from a business they no longer operate, or generic codes like "Other business support service activities not elsewhere classified" that tell you nothing. Read the website and the strategic report (if there is one) for what the company actually does.

How far back does Companies House history go?

The digital filing history typically goes back to incorporation for any active company, and the full image library covers anything filed since the late 1990s in scanned form. For dissolved companies, records are retained for 20 years after dissolution before being transferred to the National Archives.