Every company's real deadline is its own confirmation statement date after 18 November 2025.
You file your confirmation statement and Companies House sends it back. A director named on the filing has not verified their identity, and the statement will not go through until they have. Personal identity verification became a legal requirement for company directors on 18 November 2025, under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, and by late October 2026 it has already produced the first criminal convictions for ignoring it.
The requirement catches people out because every company has a different date. Your own date depends on your company's confirmation statement, on your own appointment, or — if you are a person with significant control without a directorship — on your own birth month.
A free legal review covers your Companies House filings alongside everything else, with a fixed price for anything you decide to fix. See what is included.
From that date, anyone who is a director of a UK company, a person with significant control (a PSC), or who sets up a new company has to prove who they are to Companies House. It is a one-off personal check, done once and kept on file. It sits alongside your other duties as a director — see a director's seven legal duties, in plain English for the rest of what the role carries.
18 November 2025 is the date the requirement started. It marked the start of a 12-month transition period for anyone already a director or PSC when the law changed. Your own deadline sits inside that transition period, set by your company's own filing calendar, covered next. Anyone appointed as a director, or forming a company, from that date onward has no transition period: verification happens as part of that filing.
If you were already a director when the law changed, you give your Companies House personal code with your company's next confirmation statement filed after 18 November 2025. Confirmation statements fall on a date set by your company's own filing history. Two companies can sit months apart on when this bites.
Say a company's last confirmation statement was filed on 2 December 2025, and the next is due 2 December 2026. Its directors have close to a year to sort out verification. A different company with a statement due on 20 December 2025, two days after the rule changed, gives its directors barely any notice. Both sit inside the same 12-month transition period the law describes, and both still work to a completely different timetable. Find your own confirmation statement date on the Companies House register before assuming you have until next November.
A new director appointed to an existing company at any point from 18 November 2025 verifies as part of the appointment filing, immediately, whatever the company's confirmation statement date. Anyone incorporating a new company from that date verifies as part of incorporation, before the company exists on the register at all.
People with significant control run on a timetable of their own, separate from the confirmation statement. A PSC added to the register after 18 November 2025 verifies when first added, within 14 days. An existing PSC who also holds a directorship verifies within 14 days after the company's confirmation statement date, piggybacking on that filing in practice. A PSC who holds no directorship verifies within the first 14 days of their own birth month, every year, a date with no connection to the company's filing calendar and worth setting a personal reminder for.
Corporate members of limited liability partnerships, where the member on the register is itself a company, are not yet brought into this regime. Companies House has said that extension will follow at a later date. Individual LLP members already sit under the same rules as company directors.
Whichever route you use, you end up with a Companies House personal code, tied to you personally, which you then quote on every filing that asks for it.
The first two are free and take under fifteen minutes. The third suits anyone who already has a company secretarial relationship with a professional adviser and wants to hand the task over to them.
A confirmation statement naming an unverified director is rejected outright. Continuing to act as a director while unverified is a criminal offence under section 167M of the Companies Act 2006, inserted by the 2023 Act. Companies House first sends a letter setting out the offence and warning that enforcement may follow without further notice, then can prosecute through the courts, refer the matter to the Insolvency Service, or issue a financial penalty directly.
On 17 September 2026, Companies House announced the first convictions. Jill White, a director of White (Reading Properties) Limited, was fined £166 plus £85 costs and a £66 victim surcharge for continuing to act as a director without verifying her identity. Her co-director, Marc Dillon, had verified his own identity — and was prosecuted anyway, fined £307 plus £85 costs and a £123 surcharge, for failing to take reasonable steps to stop White carrying on unverified. Modinat Banjo, a director of J Isogony Apparel Limited, was fined £80 plus £85 costs and a £32 surcharge on the same grounds. Both companies were separately convicted for filing confirmation statements late.
Dillon's case matters because verifying your own identity does not clear you if a co-director carries on unverified around you.
Verifying your identity is an administrative filing task carried out by you or whoever already handles your company secretarial work; none of the six legal activities reserved to authorised firms cover it. A free business legal review checks this alongside your other filings, your contracts and your employment paperwork, with a fixed price for anything you decide to fix. If your company has already been struck off over a missed filing, restoring a struck-off company: the RT01 route covers getting it back.
The rest of what the role carries is in a director's seven legal duties, in plain English. If a missed filing has already led to the company being dissolved, see restoring a struck-off company: the RT01 route. A wider check across the business, including this one, is the business legal review.
There is no single date for everyone. If you are an existing director of an existing company, your personal deadline is whenever your company's next confirmation statement falls due after 18 November 2025 — you give your Companies House personal code as part of that filing, and the statement will not be accepted without it. A company with a confirmation statement due in December 2025 gives its directors far less notice than one due next September. If you are a new director being appointed, or you are forming a new company, verification is required as part of that filing itself, with no transition period at all. Check your company's confirmation statement date on the Companies House register before assuming you have until next November.
Every director named on the company has to verify, including anyone who never signs a filing themselves. Companies House will not accept a confirmation statement until every director listed on it has verified their identity and has a personal code on record, so one unverified co-director blocks the filing for the whole board. People with significant control verify on a timetable of their own, separate from the confirmation statement. If one director on your board has not verified yet, that is the person to chase first, because their inaction stops the company filing anything.
It will not be filed. Companies House has stated plainly that it will not accept a confirmation statement until all directors named on it have verified their identity, so an incomplete filing gets rejected on the spot. A rejected confirmation statement counts as a late one, and a company that lets its confirmation statement run overdue risks being struck off the register eventually, which is a far longer problem to fix than finishing the verification itself. Treat the rejection as a missed filing deadline, and get the verification done before resubmitting.
Yes, if they are registered with Companies House as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, usually shortened to ACSP. An ACSP checks your identity documents and confirms to Companies House that the check has been done, reaching the same result as verifying yourself through GOV.UK One Login or at a Post Office, carried out by someone already set up to do it for clients. Ask whoever handles your company secretarial work whether they hold ACSP status before assuming they can do this for you, because not every accountant or solicitor has registered for it, even if they handle your other filings.
It depends on when you were added to the register and whether you also hold a directorship. A PSC added to the register after 18 November 2025 verifies when first added, within 14 days. An existing PSC who is also a director verifies within 14 days after the company's confirmation statement date. A PSC who holds no directorship verifies within the first 14 days of their own birth month each year, a date with no connection to the company's own filing calendar. Put that date in your own diary, since the company's filing calendar will not flag it for you.
Continuing to act as a director without verifying is an offence under section 167M of the Companies Act 2006, added by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. Companies House first sends a letter setting out the offence and warning that enforcement may follow without further notice, then can prosecute through the courts, refer the case to the Insolvency Service, or issue a financial penalty. In the first prosecutions, reported on 17 September 2026, three directors across two companies were fined between £80 and £307 plus costs and a victim surcharge, for failing to verify and for related confirmation statement offences. One had verified his own identity and was prosecuted anyway, for failing to stop a co-director who had not.
Individual members of an LLP are already within scope in the same way directors are, because the same personal verification rules apply to anyone controlling a company-type entity on the register. Companies House has said identity verification for corporate members of an LLP, where the member itself is a company, will be introduced at a later date, so that specific gap has not yet been closed. If every member of your LLP is an individual, do not wait for a later phase — verify now on the same timetable as a company director.
Tell us what has happened and what you want to happen about it. We will come back with what the job involves, who carries it out and what it costs, in writing, before you commit to anything.
