Articles
Analysis and insights on UK companies, corporate governance, and business data.
Analysis and insights on UK companies, corporate governance, and business data.
Every year Companies House strikes off well over half a million UK companies. A small fraction return. The route they take — administrative restoration under sections 1024–1028 of the Companies Act 2006, or a court order under sections 1029–1032 — turns on one number: the two-year deadline. This article sets out both paths, the time limits, the Crown waiver requirement, and what the restoration data tells us about who comes back and why.
By Helen Raines
Limited partnerships sat outside the PSC regime for years while Scottish LPs became a documented vehicle of choice for money laundering. ECCTA has now brought both English and Scottish LPs under Companies House's transparency framework. This piece maps the three LP types, the forms they file, and what the reforms actually change for due diligence.
By Daniel Mensah
The Companies House register has grown from 3.6 million to 5.5 million active companies in a decade. We break down the year-by-year IN01 filing data, the pandemic-era surge, the regional and sectoral distribution, and what ECCTA's director identity verification regime means for the next wave of formations.
By Helen Raines
Of the 5.5 million companies on the UK register, roughly 1.2 million file a corporation tax return each year. The other 4.3 million are not evading anything — they sit in five defined categories: dormant, exempt, newly incorporated, dissolution-pending, or non-trading. Here is what the public record reveals about each.
By Helen Raines
Four years after the Economic Crime Act created Britain's Register of Overseas Entities, more than 33,000 foreign-owned entities have declared their UK property holdings. We examine compliance rates, the annual update duty, the 4,500+ warning notices issued, and the six gaps the register still leaves open.
By Daniel Mensah
ECCTA gave the Registrar of Companies a suite of new enforcement powers in 2024 — financial penalties, mandatory query powers, and a broader prosecution remit. Two years on, the data shows how those powers are actually being used, which offences dominate the enforcement log, and where the gaps remain.
By Daniel Mensah
Twenty years after the Companies Act 2006 codified the unfair prejudice remedy, Section 994 petitions remain the most potent weapon a minority shareholder holds — yet most never reach trial. We examine the filing data, the typical fact patterns, and what a petition actually costs to pursue.
By Daniel Mensah
Every UK company picks at least one SIC code at incorporation. The 2007 revision supplies 740 options across 21 sections — yet fewer than 20 codes account for over half the register. Here is how the classification system works, which codes dominate, what happens when companies file the wrong one, and how ECCTA quietly raised the stakes.
By Helen Raines
The April 2025 small company threshold uplift — turnover to £15m, balance sheet to £7.5m — has quietly moved an estimated 60,000–80,000 UK companies out of mandatory audit. This piece maps the new exemption tiers, quantifies the population shift, and examines the voluntary audit phenomenon that means perhaps 15% of newly exempt companies will keep their auditor anyway.
By Helen Raines
Companies House overhauled its fee schedule on 1 May 2024 under ECCTA's cost-recovery mandate, ending a near-decade of frozen prices. Two years on, we map every major filing fee, compare digital against paper, and examine what the new funding model means for enforcement, identity verification and the WebFiling sunset.
By Helen Raines
Most of Britain's 5.5 million companies never filed bespoke articles of association. They run on the Companies Act 2006's Model Articles — a default constitution most directors have never read. Here is what it actually says, where it bites, and why ECCTA is now changing the calculus.
By Daniel Mensah
Companies House receives over 4 million accounts filings annually, but they do not arrive evenly. The register has a seasonal pulse — and missing it by even a day triggers automatic penalties that start at £150. We map the UK corporate filing year, the two-speed deadline system, and the months where late-filing risk concentrates.
By Helen Raines
The ECCTA identity verification regime is the most consequential change to the UK corporate register since the PSC register in 2016. With a phased rollout now underway and a target of verifying every company director in Britain, we examine the statutory framework, the three routes to compliance, and what the data tells us about the scale of the challenge.
By Daniel Mensah
Section 656 of the Companies Act 2006 forces every PLC whose net assets fall to half of its called-up share capital to convene a general meeting within 56 days. Seventeen years in, the criminal duty is still live, still largely unused — and still on no one's compliance calendar.
By Helen Raines
Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting turned seven this April. The 2025 audit threshold uplift has just removed thousands of mid-sized companies from its scope — and reshaped the data baseline regulators rely on.
By Helen Raines
Eleven years on from the launch of the Free Company Information API, the Companies House data stack covers the current state of five million companies exhaustively. The bulk files, the streams and the six gaps still defining the open register.
By Helen Raines
Companies House issues every entity an eight-character number under section 1066 of the 2006 Act. The prefix system encodes jurisdiction and entity type — and quietly remains the register's most reliable join key from 1844 to 2026.
By Helen Raines
Chapter 4 of Part 18 gives UK private companies three statutory funding sources for a share buyback — plus the 2013 de minimis short cut. We set them side by side, with the SH03 trail each leaves and the s1033 CTA tax fork.
By Helen Raines
Three full AGM seasons after the Pre-Emption Group doubled the routine disapplication ceiling to 10 per cent, what have FTSE 350 and AIM issuers actually done with Britain's new 24 per cent headroom?
By Helen Raines
Section 190 CA 2006 demands member approval before a director or connected person buys or sells a substantial non-cash asset with the company. The £100,000 cap hasn't moved since 2007 — and ECCTA just made the connected-persons net easier to map.
By Daniel Mensah
Part 7 of the Companies Act 2006 lets a UK company change its legal type — public to private, limited to unlimited and the reverse — through five distinct re-registration routes. What the RR forms reveal.
By Helen Raines
June 2026 marks six years since CIGA inserted the standalone moratorium into the Insolvency Act 1986. Uptake has flatlined at roughly twenty filings a year — and the bank carve-out is the reason why.
By Helen Raines
ECCTA's full-P&L mandate finally makes the section 830 distributable-reserves test auditable from outside the boardroom — but it does not amend it. Why directors face a sharper clawback risk in 2026, and what Burnden, Sequana and BHS still tell the register.
By Helen Raines
Nineteen years after Part 22 of the Companies Act 2006 commenced, listed-company boards still reach for a section 793 notice — not the PSC register — when shareholder identity actually matters.
By Daniel Mensah