Almost everything a person might want to know about a UK limited company is sitting in one place, in public, available to anyone, at no cost. Most people never look. They take a company at its word — the confident website, the official-sounding name, the “Ltd” on the invoice — because they do not realise that the means to check is free, fast, and open to them. That means is the Companies House register, and learning to search it well is one of the most useful, least taught skills in modern business.
This guide walks through the whole thing from the beginning: what Companies House is, how to search it, what every part of a company’s record means, what it cannot tell you, and how to turn a few minutes of looking into a genuinely informed decision.
What Companies House actually is
Companies House is the official registrar of companies in the United Kingdom. Every limited company — and certain other types of business — must register with it to exist legally, and must keep filing information with it for as long as the company operates. It is a government body, and the information it holds is, by deliberate design, a public record.
That public design is the whole point. The bargain at the heart of limited liability is transparency: in exchange for the protection of operating as a limited company, a business agrees to disclose certain facts about itself for anyone to see. Who runs it, who controls it, where it is registered, and how it is performing in broad terms — all of this is published precisely so that the people dealing with the company can check it. Companies House is where that bargain is kept.
Why a Companies House search is worth doing
A Companies House search answers the questions that matter before trusting a business with money, work, or a contract. Is the company real and currently trading? Is it registered under the name it uses? Who are the people behind it, and does their history hold up? Is it meeting its legal obligations, or letting them slide? None of these can be answered reliably from a website or a sales call. All of them can be answered from the register, usually in less time than it takes to make a cup of tea.
For a beginner, the reassuring truth is that none of this requires expertise. The information is laid out plainly. The skill is simply knowing what each part means and what to make of it.
How to run the search
Companies House provides a free online search service, accessible to anyone without an account or a fee. There are two ways to begin.
The first is to search by company name. Typing in the business name brings up matching companies, and from there the specific company can be selected. The caution here, which matters more than beginners expect, is that names are not unique enough to rely on blindly — several companies can have similar names, and a business may trade under a name different from the one it is registered as. The goal is to find the exact company, confirmed by its details rather than just a familiar-looking name.
The second, and more precise, way is to search by company registration number. Every registered company has a unique number, and it points to one entity and no other. If the number is known — it often appears on invoices, contracts, and the foot of a company’s website, where it is legally required on certain documents — searching by it removes any doubt about which company is being looked at.
Once the right company is found, its full public record opens up, organised into a few clear sections.
Reading a company’s overview
The first thing the record shows is the company’s overview, and several details here deserve immediate attention.
The company status is the single most important field. “Active” means the company exists and is registered as operating. “Dormant” means it is registered but not currently trading. “Dissolved” means it no longer legally exists. “In liquidation” or “proposed for strike-off” means it is on its way out. A company quoting for work while marked for strike-off is a warning sign delivered free of charge, and checking status takes seconds.
The incorporation date shows when the company was registered. It is useful context, though age alone proves little: plenty of excellent businesses are young, and aged companies are sometimes bought precisely to borrow credibility. The company type indicates whether it is a private limited company, a public limited company, a limited liability partnership, or something else. And the registered office is the official address for legal correspondence — worth noting, but worth treating with care, since many legitimate companies register at an accountant’s or formation agent’s address rather than a trading premises.
Reading the filing history
The filing history is the company’s timeline of everything it has submitted to Companies House, dated and listed in order. For a beginner, two things stand out.
The first is whether the company files on time. A steady record of accounts and confirmation statements submitted punctually, year after year, suggests an organised, well-run business. Overdue accounts or repeated late filings suggest the opposite — not necessarily dishonesty, but disorder, and disorder is exactly what a check is meant to surface.
The second is the accounts themselves. These show, in broad terms, how the company is doing. It is important to know that smaller companies are legally allowed to file abbreviated or “filleted” accounts, which leave out a great deal — often including turnover and profit. So “accounts filed” confirms the company is meeting its obligations, but for a small company it may reveal little about actual financial health. Reading the accounts over several years can still show a direction of travel: growing, steady, or quietly shrinking.
Reading the people section
This section names the company’s officers — its directors and any company secretary — and, separately, its persons with significant control, usually shortened to PSCs.
The distinction matters and trips up beginners. A director runs the company day to day. A PSC is someone who ultimately owns or controls it — typically by holding more than a quarter of the shares or voting rights. They are often the same people, but not always, and when the person directing a company differs from the person controlling it, that is worth understanding.
A genuinely useful feature here is that each director’s name links to their other appointments. Selecting a director reveals every other company they are or have been involved with — effectively a director search built into the register. This is where some of the most valuable signals appear. A director with a long, stable history across solvent companies inspires confidence. One whose previous companies were dissolved within a year or two of forming, often under similar names, fits a pattern worth treating with real caution.
Reading charges and other sections
Many company records include a “charges” section. A charge is security a company has granted to a lender — a mortgage or debenture, for example — giving that lender a claim over the company’s assets. Borrowing is normal, and a charge is not a red flag in itself. But a cluster of recent charges can add useful texture to the picture of a company’s obligations and pressures.
Some records also carry insolvency information where it applies, and notices of significant events. For a beginner, the rule of thumb is simple: read these sections when they exist, because a company rarely advertises the things recorded here, and they are exactly the details a careful person wants to know.
Searching for a person rather than a company
The register can be searched from the other direction too — starting with a person rather than a business. This is invaluable when the concern is an individual: a prospective business partner, a director whose track record matters, or someone whose name keeps appearing across several companies.
A person-based search assembles a single view of everything an individual is connected to, which often reveals patterns invisible from inside any one company. A director might look entirely sound when examined through the single business in front of you, yet show a trail of failed companies when looked at as an individual. Knowing this lens exists is half the value of using the register well.
What a Companies House search cannot tell you
A complete beginner’s guide has to be honest about the register’s limits, because misunderstanding them leads to false confidence.
Companies House is, for the most part, a register of what companies file, not a guarantee that everything filed is true or that every company is sound. Historically, much of the information was accepted largely as submitted, which is why outright verification of every detail has not been something the register could promise. Reforms have been strengthening Companies House’s powers to check and verify information and to improve the reliability of the register, and anyone relying on it heavily should be aware that the rules in this area have been evolving — it is worth confirming the current position for serious checks.
Beyond that, the register does not provide credit scores, detailed financial intelligence, or payment-behaviour data; those sit with paid commercial services. And for smaller companies, the abbreviated accounts on file genuinely omit a lot. A clean Companies House record confirms a great deal — that a company is real, active, accountable, and meeting its obligations — but it is a foundation for judgement, not a complete verdict.
When to go further
For most everyday decisions, a free Companies House search is enough: it answers the foundational questions and catches the obvious problems. When the stakes rise — a major contract, a significant credit line, a critical supplier, a partnership where failure would genuinely hurt — it is worth going beyond the free record into paid credit reports and fuller financial data. The skill is matching the depth of the check to the size of the risk, and not paying for forensic detail on a decision that a two-minute search already answers.
This proportionate, well-grounded way of using the register is one that the people who work with it every day understand instinctively. Your Company Formations, one of the UK’s established company formation providers, sits close enough to Companies House to read its records fluently — to know what a status, a set of filleted accounts, or a director’s appointment history really reveals, and where the record’s edges lie. Having registered and maintained a large number of UK companies, it has seen from the inside how a clean, well-kept public record becomes a business’s quiet credential, and why learning to read someone else’s record is simply the other half of keeping one worth trusting.
Putting it all together
A Companies House search is, in the end, a sequence of small, plain questions answered from a public record that was free the entire time. Is the company real and active? Is it registered under the name it uses? Who runs it, and who controls it? Is it meeting its obligations, and does its filing history read like a business in control of itself? Does the person behind it have a history that holds up?
None of this requires training, and none of it costs anything. The only thing standing between most people and a genuinely informed view of a company is the assumption that checking must be difficult or expensive. It is neither. The register is open, the search is free, and the few minutes it takes to look are, more often than anyone expects, the most valuable few minutes in the whole transaction.
