Director History Checks: Disqualifications and Phoenixing

How to read a director's history for disqualifications, prior company failures and phoenixing patterns.

A director history check reads the people behind a supplier rather than the company itself. It tells you whether the directors have run businesses before, how those businesses ended, and whether the pattern of appointments and resignations matches a normal trading career or a more concerning rhythm of failure-and-restart. In a lot of UK supplier failures, the warning was visible on the officers' files months before it became visible on the company's.

TL;DR

Companies House publishes every UK director's full appointment history for free. Most procurement teams don't read it.
The Insolvency Service maintains a separate disqualified-directors register. A live disqualification is an immediate stop.
Phoenixing is the pattern where the same people, in the same trade, wind up an insolvent company and start a near-identical one. It is legal in most forms but a serious risk signal.
Prior company failures are not disqualifying on their own. The shape of the failures (clean wind-down vs creditor losses) is what matters.
Very long tenure with no other directorships usually reads well. A long list of short, overlapping appointments deserves a second look.
The cleanest company file in the world can sit on top of a director history that should change your decision.

How do I find a director's history?

Search the officer by name on Companies House, then open the appointments page. Every UK director has a personal record that lists every current and dissolved appointment, dates of appointment and resignation, and the role held.

The search lives at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Search the supplier first, click into the company, click an officer's name, and Companies House takes you to that person's appointment list. The same record is reachable directly by searching the officer name, though common names produce a lot of false positives. Date of birth (month and year only is public) is the disambiguator.

That single page answers most of the governance questions a procurement team needs. How many other companies does this person run. How long has this one been going. What happened to the dissolved ones. Whether the people on the supplier's pitch deck match the people on the statutory file.

For deeper work, the Companies House checks explained guide covers what each filing type contains and how to read it.

What does the disqualified directors register tell me?

The Insolvency Service publishes a public register of every person currently banned from acting as a UK company director. If your supplier's named director is on it, you have your answer.

The register lives at gov.uk and is searchable by name. A disqualification order or undertaking lasts between two and fifteen years and is issued where a director's conduct in a failed company was found to be unfit: trading while insolvent, failing to pay tax, false accounting, or breaching their duties to creditors. The published record names the company that triggered it and the conduct that justified it.

Two practical points. The register only shows live disqualifications, not expired ones, so a clean search doesn't mean no history. And a disqualified person sometimes continues to run the business through a nominee director or a relative. If the trading reality of the supplier doesn't match the statutory directors, ask why.

What does phoenixing look like in the data?

Same people, same trade, new company, started shortly after the old one collapsed owing money. It is the single most recognisable pattern in director-history work.

The classic shape: a limited company in, say, scaffolding fails owing money to HMRC, trade creditors and possibly employees. Within weeks or months, a new company with a similar name, the same directors and the same office address starts trading in the same sector, often with assets bought cheaply from the liquidator. Customers don't notice. Creditors of the old company carry the loss.

Most phoenixing is technically lawful. The Insolvency Act restricts the reuse of a name where a director was involved in a recent liquidation (section 216), but the workarounds (slight name changes, court permission, or a sale through the liquidator) are well-known. Disqualification only follows where the conduct in the failed company was unfit, which is a higher bar.

For a procurement team the question is not whether the directors broke the law. It is whether you are about to extend credit to people who have a recent track record of leaving creditors short. If the supplier's directors have been through one or more recent insolvent liquidations in the same sector, that belongs in the risk note, regardless of how the new entity's accounts look. The red flags in supplier financials guide treats this alongside the balance-sheet signals it usually accompanies.

How should I read prior company failures?

Not every failed company is a phoenix. Read the type of failure, the role of the director, and how long ago it was.

A few distinctions worth holding in mind:

Voluntary strike-off vs liquidation. A company struck off because the directors closed it down with no debts is procedurally similar in the filing history to a company that collapsed owing creditors, but the substance is opposite. Check the final filings: were there creditors at strike-off, was a liquidator appointed, was the final return a members' voluntary liquidation (solvent) or a creditors' voluntary liquidation (insolvent).
Director role at the time. Was the person on the board when the company failed, or had they resigned a year earlier. Resigning shortly before an insolvency can be a red flag in its own right (a director who saw it coming and stepped off), but it can also be entirely innocent.
Time since failure. A creditors' voluntary liquidation in 2014 reads very differently from one in 2024. Director history that is a decade old, followed by a clean run since, is rarely a reason to refuse a contract on its own.
Sector. A director with a failed restaurant in 2020 carries less weight than the same person with a failed business in the trade they are now pitching for.

One failed company in a fifteen-year career is normal. Two or three failures with creditor losses, particularly in the same sector and close together, is a pattern worth raising directly with the supplier before signing.

How do I read tenure and frequency of appointments?

Long, stable tenure with few other directorships usually reads well. A long list of short, overlapping appointments needs a closer look.

The two shapes that come up most often:

The settled director: appointed to the supplier company eight years ago, one or two non-trading appointments (a dormant holding company, a property SPV), no resignations. This is the procurement-friendly profile and it usually correlates with a stable company file.

The serial appointer: thirty or forty current and dissolved appointments, several active at once, short tenures, a mix of sectors. This can be entirely legitimate — professional non-executive directors, accountants who hold formal director roles for client companies, and serial entrepreneurs all look like this. It is also the shape that hides phoenixing and nominee arrangements. The right response is not to refuse the contract. It is to read the dissolved appointments individually and see how they ended.

Sudden churn at director or PSC level immediately before a contract bid is the third pattern worth flagging. A supplier that has just replaced its finance director, or where the PSC has changed in the last six months, deserves a direct question about why.

How does this fit into a wider supplier check?

Director history sits inside the governance layer of a full check, alongside the PSC record and the company's own filings. It is rarely the only signal, but it is often the most predictive.

The supplier due diligence guide sets out the full structure of a UK check; director history is the part that gives the company file its context. A weak balance sheet on a company run by experienced directors with clean histories reads very differently from the same balance sheet on a company run by directors with two recent insolvencies behind them.

For sector-specific weight, recruitment and staffing is one of the verticals where director history is consistently more predictive than current accounts — payroll-funded businesses can collapse quickly, and the people running the next one are often the people who ran the last one. The recruitment supplier due diligence page covers the specifics.

The supplier onboarding checklist covers where director checks slot into the operational sequence around a new vendor — the contract artefacts, the data-sharing paperwork, the payment setup.

FAQ

Is it legal to start a new company straight after a previous one failed?

Yes, in most cases. UK law does not bar a director whose previous company entered insolvent liquidation from starting another. The restrictions are narrower: section 216 of the Insolvency Act restricts reuse of a name associated with a liquidated company for five years without court permission or a qualifying sale, and a disqualification order bars the person from acting as a director at all. Outside those, the same people can incorporate a new company the next day.

How can I tell a phoenix company from a legitimate restart?

Look at the gap, the creditors and the customers. A genuine restart usually involves a clean wind-down (no creditor losses), a meaningful gap, and a different customer base or proposition. A phoenix typically follows an insolvent liquidation closely in time, picks up the old company's customers and assets through the liquidator, and leaves the old creditors uncompensated. Neither is automatically disqualifying for a buyer, but the second deserves a written question.

Does Companies House show whether a director was banned in the past?

Only if the disqualification is currently live. Expired disqualifications drop off the public register. The Insolvency Service holds the historical record but does not publish it openly. If a current Companies House appointment exists, the person is not under a live ban — but you cannot assume there was never one.

What if the named director isn't really the person running the business?

That is a governance signal in itself. Nominee directors are lawful (an accountant or company-formation agent acting as a director of record), but a mismatch between who pitched for the contract and who appears on the statutory file deserves a direct question. The PSC register is the second check — whoever ultimately owns or controls the company should be named there.

How far back does a director's history matter?

Recent history matters most. A creditors' voluntary liquidation in the last three years carries real weight; one fifteen years ago, followed by a clean run, usually does not. The exception is a pattern: three failures across twelve years in the same sector still reads as a pattern even when each individual event is old.

Can a director hide a failed company by changing their name?

In principle yes, in practice rarely cleanly. Companies House records the name used at the time of each appointment and updates it when a director files a change. Date of birth (month and year) is a stable cross-reference. A persistent search using both name and DOB usually surfaces the history; the rare cases where it doesn't are typically why analyst-reviewed reports cost more than a self-serve search.