Companies House identity verification has a hard stop on 18 November 2026. Every current director and person with significant control must verify by then. For most companies the real deadline comes sooner. An unverified director blocks the next confirmation statement. One person who has not verified stops the whole filing.
What is the deadline?
There are two. Firms keep quoting the wrong one.
18 November 2026 ends the transition period. It is the long stop for everyone appointed before the rules started.
The one that bites is the next confirmation statement. A current director must verify before that filing goes in. A company with one due in September has weeks, not months.
The rule started on 18 November 2025, under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. Anyone appointed on or after that date must verify before Companies House records the appointment. New PSCs get 14 days to give Companies House their personal code.
Who has to verify?
Every director. Every PSC. In most cases that means anyone holding 25% or more of the shares or voting rights. Members of LLPs too.
Location makes no difference. An overseas director must verify too.
Some groups come later. Limited partnerships and corporate directors are not yet in scope. Nor are corporate members of LLPs, or officers of corporate PSCs.
The check is a one-off. A person who has already verified does not repeat it. They must still supply their personal code and a statement for each role they hold.
What happens if a director does not verify?
The filing fails. Companies House will not take a confirmation statement while a director is unverified. It can also reject other filings and block new appointments.
Beyond that sit real penalties. Companies House has said it will issue civil penalties. Where a breach continues it will bring criminal charges. In the worst cases it can apply to strike the company off the register.
For a firm acting as company secretary, that is a client-facing risk. A missed confirmation statement shows on the public register.
Firms filing on behalf of clients need every director verified before the next confirmation statement, not before November. A single unverified director stops the filing. The personal code has to be collected and stored somewhere reliable. The person who holds it is rarely the person doing the filing.
How does Companies House identity verification work?
Two routes.
The first is GOV.UK One Login. It is free. Most cases take a few minutes with a biometric passport or a UK driving licence. It accepts biometric passports issued anywhere.
The second is an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, or ACSP. An ACSP is a UK firm approved by Companies House to check identity. It must sit under one of the UK’s 25 anti-money laundering supervisors. Law firms and accountants often are.
ACSPs suit overseas directors, non-standard documents and companies with large boards. Those are the cases where One Login stalls on camera quality, text codes or document checks.
Either route gives you a personal code. That code, not the check itself, is what you use at filing.
What about firms that file for clients?
A second rule is coming. It reaches people who present filings, including agents acting for clients. Companies House first expected it in spring 2026. It has now moved to no earlier than November 2026.
Agents will need ACSP registration to file. A firm can register at any time. Doing it early is worth it if filing for clients is part of the service.
What should firms do now?
Three tasks.
List every client company with a confirmation statement due before November. Check each director against it. That list is the actual workload.
Decide where personal codes live. Each filing needs them. They belong to individuals rather than the company, so a code sitting in one partner’s inbox is a single point of failure.
Confirm the firm’s own ACSP position. It matters both for checking clients and for filing on their behalf later.
A company can file its confirmation statement early, at any point in the review period. Where the board is already verified, filing early closes the issue.
The Legal Brief covered the wider economic crime agenda in its report on AML supervision moving to the FCA. That reform brings its own fit and proper checks on owners and officers. The Brief looked at corporate compliance enforcement in its report on the Ultra Electronics deferred prosecution agreement.
Companies House runs guidance on its identity verification campaign site. ICAEW has published a briefing on ACSP registration and ID verification.