The Companies House ID deadline is next week and what boards should check now

Most of what has been written about Companies House identity verification is aimed at owner-managed businesses, where the director, the shareholder and the person filing the confirmation statement are usually the same individual and the whole thing takes ten minutes on a phone. Listed resources companies are a different case, because their boards tend to include non-executives based in Australia, Canada or southern Africa, directors who sit on several boards with different filing dates, and shareholders who cross the 25% threshold after a placing or an asset deal, and every one of those people now has a verification record that sits on the public register beside the company's name.

The twelve-month transition that began on 18 November 2025 ends on 17 November 2026, so there is a week left. For a director already in office when the rules started, the practical deadline has been the company's next confirmation statement during that year, and Companies House will not accept the statement while any director remains unverified, which means a single overseas non-executive who has not got round to it can leave the whole company in default. Companies House's own figures to the end of June showed that only 55% of directors and 42% of PSCs had verified, so it would be surprising if every board on AIM, Aquis and the Main Market were already clear.

The point small quoted companies most often miss is that the PSC regime applies to them. Companies with shares on a regulated market such as the Main Market are generally outside it because they report major holdings under the Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules, but AIM and the Aquis Growth Market are not regulated markets, so their companies keep PSC registers, and an individual founder or cornerstone investor holding more than 25% has to verify within a fourteen-day window set by their birth month, or after the confirmation statement if they are also a director.

What a board should do this week is straightforward:

• Check every director and PSC against the Companies House register

• Chase anyone who has not verified and make sure those who have done so have also given Companies House their personal code for each role they hold (verifying through GOV.UK One Login and linking that verification to a company are separate steps).

Non-UK directors can use One Login with a biometric passport from any country, and those who cannot can verify through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider instead.

After the deadline the position hardens, since acting as a director without verification is an offence, filings connected to unverified individuals can be rejected and Companies House can impose civil penalties, even if it has said its first priority is getting people through. For a company whose investors and adviser read its filings as evidence of good housekeeping, a public default on the register is the more immediate cost. The one piece of relief for stretched finance teams is that the next stage is further off than first planned, with verification for people filing on a company's behalf and compulsory registration for filing agents, now coming no earlier than November 2027.

At Pure Reports we look after the accounting and company secretarial work for listed companies and checking each officer and PSC against the register, managing confirmation statements and keeping the PSC register right after every placing are part of that service. If you are not sure where your board stands with a week to go, we would be happy to take a look.