How to check a UK company director

Companies House publishes its register through a free service called Find and update company information. A company’s page shows its registered office, its status, the date it was incorporated, the nature of its business and its full filing history.

The People tab lists the current and former officers and the people with significant control. Each officer’s name leads to a list of their other appointments, which shows the other companies that person directs or has directed, with the dates.

Most UK companies must record their people with significant control: anyone who holds more than a quarter of the shares or voting rights, can appoint or remove a majority of the board, or otherwise has significant influence or control. Where the controller is another company, the record names that company instead, and the chain has to be followed.

A chain that leads outside the UK is common and is not wrong in itself, but the records abroad are often thinner. Overseas entities that own land in the UK must also appear on the Register of Overseas Entities, which Companies House keeps.

The filing history holds the annual accounts, the confirmation statements, charges registered by lenders, and every change of officer, owner and registered office. Read in order, it is a timeline of the company.

Some patterns are worth a question: accounts filed late or not at all, frequent changes of registered office or of directors, a new director appointed just before a deal, or a company that has been dormant until recently. None of these is proof of wrongdoing. Each is a reason to ask.

Companies House also keeps a register of disqualified directors. The Insolvency Service publishes the Individual Insolvency Register, which lists current bankruptcies, individual voluntary arrangements and debt relief orders. The Gazette, the official public record, carries notices of winding-up petitions, liquidations and companies being struck off.

For a firm that should be regulated, check the Financial Conduct Authority’s Financial Services Register. For a charity, check the register of the Charity Commission for England and Wales, or its counterpart in Scotland or Northern Ireland. For sanctions, check the UK Sanctions List, which has a guide of its own here.

Companies House has long accepted filings without checking whether they are true, and it says so on its own pages. Since November 2025 directors and people with significant control have had to verify their identity with Companies House, with existing officers brought in over the following year, which makes the register more reliable, but the accounts and other details are still what the company chose to file.

A name is not an identity. Many people share a name, and the register shows only the month and year of a director’s birth. Before treating two records as the same person, compare the dates, the addresses and the other appointments. Where they cannot be matched with confidence, say so rather than assume.

The free registers answer a lot, and for a small decision they may be enough. Where the decision is large or hard to reverse, where the ownership runs abroad, or where the records disagree, a professional check adds litigation, adverse media, sanctions screening and a comparison of every source, with each finding graded and dated.