Companies House Identity Verification: Your Real Deadline and What Every Director Needs to Know

If you’re a director, your Companies House identity verification deadline probably isn’t 17 November 2026. It’s set by your company’s next confirmation statement, or, if you’re a shareholder who isn’t a director, by a 14-day window in your birth month. Companies House won’t accept the filing until the checks are done.

If you’ve seen the November date in the headlines and pencilled this in as a job for later, you’re not alone. It’s an easy mistake to make. That date is the end of the 12-month transition period. It isn’t the date the law sets for your company, and the gap between the two is where directors get caught out.

That leaves roughly 45% of director appointments still to go at the end of June. I don’t think that’s laziness. I think many of those directors believe they’ve got until November, and plenty of them haven’t. It sits on the same admin list as the rising S455 charge on directors’ loans.

Why Companies House now checks who you are

Identity verification comes from the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. The same Act gave Companies House stronger powers to query and challenge what’s on the register. It also added a registered email address for every company and a duty to keep an appropriate registered office address. The aim is a register people can trust.

Your deadline is tied to your filings, not the calendar

The transitional rules sit in a statutory instrument, SI 2025/1118. They say your company must send an identity verification statement for each existing director when it files its next confirmation statement. In plain English, your filing deadline becomes your verification deadline.

Its guidance says it won’t accept your confirmation statement until every director has verified, and each director’s personal code goes on the filing. So 17 November is simply where the transition ends, and for most companies your own date comes first.

Who needs to verify, and when

Directors aren’t the only people caught by this. Verification applies to directors, to LLP members (treated as the equivalent of directors) and to individual PSCs. A PSC is a person with significant control, usually someone holding more than 25% of the shares or voting rights. People who file for a company will join them later, but not before November 2027, and Companies House has promised at least six months’ notice.

The last three rows are why I’d urge you not to treat this as one company deadline. Two people connected to the same business can have two completely different dates, worked out under two different rules. Companies House’s guidance on when to verify covers each case.

The PSC trap nobody’s properly explaining

If your spouse or a family member holds shares but isn’t a director, their deadline has nothing to do with your confirmation statement. It runs from their birthday. A director can sort their own verification, file on time, and still have a shareholder outside their window without anyone noticing. PSC appointments sitting at around 42% verified by the end of June suggests how often that happens.

What happens if you miss your identity verification deadline?

Acting as a director without having verified your identity is a criminal offence under section 167M of the Companies Act 2006, which the 2023 Act inserted. That’s not a late filing fee. It’s an offence against you personally.

Companies House’s published approach runs in stages:

1. A default letter setting out the offence.
2. Representations, but only for exceptional circumstances linked to the due date, such as a serious IT failure with no other way to complete the task.
3. A pause, usually for up to two months, if it accepts your representation.
4. Prosecution or a penalty. That’s a fine through the courts, or a financial penalty from Companies House against the company or the individual officer.

It hasn’t published a fixed penalty amount, so treat any “up to £X” figure you see online with caution.

The first prosecutions are already through the courts

On 16 September 2026, the Insolvency Service secured the first convictions at City of London Magistrates’ Court. Two directors were fined £166 and £80 for acting without verified identity. A third director, at the same company as one of them, was fined £307 for failing to stop an unverified director from continuing to act. Each case also carried £85 in costs plus a victim surcharge.

How to verify: two routes and one personal code

There are two ways to do it, and neither is hard.

The first is to verify yourself, free of charge, with GOV.UK One Login and Companies House. You’ll need photo ID such as a biometric passport from any country or a UK photo driving licence. If you haven’t got one, the same service can point you to a Post Office check or, in the UK, a check using your bank or building society details and your National Insurance number.

The second is to ask an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP). That’s a professional such as an accountant or solicitor, registered with Companies House and supervised for anti-money laundering, who verifies you using your identity documents. We’re registered as an ACSP, so if you’d rather hand it over, we can do that for you.

Either way, you end up with a Companies House personal code. It’s an 11-character code that belongs to you, not your company. Directors give it on the confirmation statement. PSCs give it through a separate Companies House service within their 14-day window. You only verify once, and the same code covers every company role you hold. If an accountant files for you, you can share it with them.

What to do next

Don’t wait for November. Some of your dates may already be close or past.

1. Find your confirmation statement date. Search your company on the Companies House register. It’s free and takes two minutes. That date is your real deadline as a director, and the register also shows PSC windows.
2. List every director and every PSC. Include shareholders who aren’t directors, especially spouses and family members. Work out each person’s deadline using the table above.
3. Deal with anyone who’s already late. If a PSC’s birth-month window has gone, or your confirmation statement is overdue, get them verified straight away and get the filing in.
4. Verify and collect the personal codes. Whoever files your confirmation statement, whether that’s you or an accountant, needs every director’s code before they can submit it.
5. Build it into new appointments. A new director verifies with the appointment filing. A new PSC has 14 days from being added.

If you’re a sole director, step 4 matters most. Nobody else can cover the filing, so if your verification stalls, the company can’t file.