Companies House is the UK registrar of companies: it incorporates companies, holds the public register of them, and receives their statutory filings.
It is a registrar, not a regulator of how businesses trade. It records what companies tell it, publishes that record free of charge, and enforces the duty to file — but it does not licence trades, resolve disputes between shareholders, or check that a business is any good. There are separate registries for England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and a company belongs to whichever one it was registered in, permanently.
Related terms
- Company number — A company number is the unique eight-character identifier Companies House assigns at incorporation, which never changes for the life of the company.
- Jurisdiction — A company's jurisdiction is the part of the UK it is registered in — England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland — and it cannot be changed after incorporation.
- Confirmation statement — A confirmation statement is the annual filing in which a company confirms that the information Companies House holds about it is correct.
Check a name
Statutory rules, then the Companies House register. Free, and no email required.
Check a company name All 31 terms