Data sources / Filings and registries

UK Companies House

Public information on registered UK companies, including filing histories and available accounts, officer and control disclosures. The required detail varies with entity type, filing period and applicable disclosure rules.

Last reviewed 14 October 2026 · report an error

Publisher: Companies House
Access: Free
Coverage: Public information on registered UK companies, including filing histories and available accounts, officer and control disclosures. The required detail varies with entity type, filing period and applicable disclosure rules.
Identifiers: Company number; Filing document reference
Freshness: Filing-driven; accounting periods and filing dates differ.
Official URL: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/

What it can establish

Use UK Companies House for a defined acquisition-research question. Match each record to the right entity using its identifiers (Company number, Filing document reference) before accepting its contents, and keep Companies House's own scope and attribution on the finding.

The company number, registered particulars, filing history and disclosures visible in the official record.
A documentary trail for comparing reported accounts, control information and corporate changes across dated filings.

What it cannot establish

An independently audited picture of every filed fact, a complete commercial operating profile or every layer of beneficial ownership.
That a registered office is an operating location, or that historic accounts describe the business's present trading performance.

A search that returns nothing in UK Companies House describes the search performed. Coverage here is public information on registered UK companies, including filing histories and available accounts, officer and control disclosures, so a missing record becomes a negative finding only where that coverage reaches the company in question and the evidence standard supports the inference. Otherwise the question stays open.

How Docket uses it

Your acquisition criteria become the agents' questions. UK Companies House can support some of them and leave others unanswered; its freshness (filing-driven; accounting periods and filing dates differ) is weighed answer by answer and it receives no blanket reliability score.

Triage. Uses the company number to distinguish entities with similar names and track renamed businesses.
Scout. Collects the filed statement and its effective period, preserving the distinction between control disclosure and operating activity.
Audit. Reconciles retained amendments and dates, and rejects an independence claim that overstates what the control record establishes.

Scout records typed answers from a fixed list with verbatim quotations from retained pages. Audit reviews only the retained material, with every fetch tool denied. It settles supported contradictions, strikes unquotable answers and leaves gaps visible. See the research-agent method and screening criteria guide for the surrounding workflow.

Pitfalls and review questions

Dormant entities, holding companies and trading subsidiaries can sit together in one group. Identify which entity the target actually represents.
A public filing is evidence of a filed statement. Read its scope, exemptions and reporting date before using it as a present-tense commercial conclusion.

What the UK register contains

Companies House keeps the public register of companies in the United Kingdom. A company record shows its registered name and number, status, registered office, incorporation date, officers with appointment and resignation dates, the filing history, charges (security) registered against it, and accounts filed. The Companies Act 2006 sets what companies must file and keep, and the register is free to search.

Since the introduction of the people with significant control regime, the register also carries information on individuals or entities who ultimately own or control more than a set threshold of shares or votes, or otherwise exercise control. Government guidance explains the definitions. This makes UK records unusually informative about ownership compared with most United States state registries.

Using the data, and cautions

A free developer interface lets researchers query company, officer and filing data programmatically, with request limits. Accounts are filed in different levels of detail depending on company size, and small companies may file abbreviated accounts with limited profit-and-loss information, so a filed set of accounts may not allow a revenue figure to be read.

The register is largely a record of what companies submit, and Companies House has historically had limited power to verify content, though reforms have extended its powers. Confirm identities and control chains against filings, and note the date of each snapshot. Overseas parents may be named as relevant legal entities without further detail.

Illustration (fictional)

A researcher examining a UK-based engineering consultancy retrieves its record. The significant-control statement names a holding company and an individual. Accounts show the company qualifies as small. The researcher records the owner chain, the dates of the statements, and the fact that revenue is not shown, and uses the charges register to note that a lender holds security over the company's assets.

Filings and registries

GLEIF Legal Entity Identifier records

A standardized legal-entity identifier and the corresponding reference data, including registration and validation context.

Filings and registries

OpenCorporates

An indexed company name, jurisdiction and identifier, with source provenance where provided in the record.

Company-published

Company websites

What the identified company publicly says about its services, footprint, customers or ownership on a retained page.

Sources and further reading

Companies House, UK Government. Free filings, accounts and persons with significant control. Ownership research is trivially easier in the UK than the US.
Companies House developer hub, Companies House. The free API over the UK register.
People with significant control requirements, GOV.UK. The UK rule that makes beneficial-owner information part of the public register.
Companies Act 2006, legislation.gov.uk. The statute that defines what a UK company must file and keep on the register.
Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) search, Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation. Open, free entity identifiers with parent relationships. The nearest thing to a global primary key for companies.

These links identify research contexts to investigate, rather than conclusions about sector attractiveness. Ask how UK Companies House would be used on your list or return to the complete source directory.

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