ECCTA 2023: Verifying identity at Companies House

The next tranche of changes will affect you if:

• You are a director of a limited or unlimited company incorporated in the UK;
• You are a person with significant control (PSC) of a company incorporated in the UK;
• You are a either a member or designated member of a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) incorporated in UK.

The major change for all the above positions is that you need to verify your identity with Companies House. It is envisaged that from 25 March 2025 you can choose to verify your identity with Companies House and from the Autumn of 2025 (date to be confirmed) this will become mandatory. This will be completed through a GOV.UK One Login account, which you can create in advance here.

Our understanding from information currently available is that this will be along the lines of the smartsearch you may have carried out when you or your company became a client of Blake Morgan or other professional firms. This means it is a Biometric system in conjunction with statutory documents such as a passport or driving licence.

We also envisage that you will be able to have your identity verified by an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, however, Companies House have temporarily postponed the roll-out of this process. In any event, Blake Morgan will not be providing this service.

Should you hold multiple positions with various companies and/or LLPs, you will not need to undergo this process for each entity. Just go through the process once and you will be given a Unique Identification Code (UI Code) by Companies House and you will then need to supply the UI Code to whomever deals with Companies House filings for each entity.

New company incorporation

This will also affect incorporations of new companies from the Autumn of 2025 whereby all potential directors and PSC’s will also have to undertake the identity verification in advance of incorporation and provide their UI Codes to whomever is undertaking the incorporation. Again, if potential directors and PSCs are already appointed on other companies then the UI Code they already have will be the one to supply for such new incorporations.

Companies House are releasing information to further assist and this can be found on the Companies House website here, and no doubt further information will become available as we get closer to both the March date and the Autumnal mandatory date. If this does affect you, we recommend regularly checking the above link as Companies House guidance may develop as we get closer to the 25 March 2025 roll-out date.