When do I need to verify my identity with Companies House?

Short answer: if you are a director of a UK company, your deadline is almost certainly not November 2026. It is the date your company next files its confirmation statement, because that filing will be rejected unless every director supplies a Companies House personal code. AI Finance Partners treats that date, not the national one, as the one that matters.

What changed, and why it is being enforced now

Identity verification at Companies House became mandatory on 18 November 2025, and in September 2026 the first prosecutions landed, which is what turned a paper obligation into a live one.

Three directors were convicted at City of London Magistrates' Court on 16 September 2026. The fines were small, a few hundred pounds each once costs and surcharges were added. The amounts are not the point. One director was convicted for signing company accounts while unverified. Another was convicted even though he had verified himself, because he allowed a fellow director to carry on acting while unverified.

That second conviction is the one to read twice. It means your own compliance is not sufficient. If you sit on a board with somebody who has not verified, their omission is your exposure. Companies House has said plainly that identity verification is not optional and that those who do not comply risk investigation and prosecution.

For most of the past year this has sat on the pile of things that were going to be dealt with nearer the time. That window has closed.

When is my actual deadline?

Your deadline is your company's next confirmation statement date, or the earliest such date across every company where you hold a directorship.

The twelve month transition that began on 18 November 2025 closes in November 2026, and that is the date doing the rounds. Treat it as a backstop rather than a target. Every company has its own confirmation statement date, tied to its incorporation anniversary or its last filing, and it is published on the Companies House register under the next statement date on the company overview page. Look yours up now. It takes a minute and it is the only date that actually binds you.

The multiple directorship point catches people out. A solicitor or a surveyor who owns the trading company, the property company that holds the office, and a dormant service company has three confirmation statement dates and is governed by the earliest of them. So is a partner who sits on a client's board as a favour.

Anyone appointed as a director since 18 November 2025 has had to verify before acting, so a firm that has brought a new partner onto the board in the past year should check that it was done properly at the time rather than assume it was.

People with significant control have their own short window to supply a code, and it works differently depending on whether they are also a director. Worth confirming your own position with Companies House or your filing agent rather than reading across from the director rule.

Does this catch LLP members?

Yes. Members of limited liability partnerships, and general partners of limited partnerships, are caught on terms equivalent to company directors.

That is why this lands harder on professional services than on most of the economy. A high street law firm is usually an LLP or a limited company, and so is a mid sized accountancy practice, a surveying practice, or an agency that incorporated a decade ago and never revisited the structure. An LLP with eight members has eight people to verify, eight codes to collect, and eight opportunities for the filing to bounce. The practice manager normally discovers this on the day the filing bounces, which is the worst possible day to discover it.

If the exact timing for members matters to your firm, confirm it against Companies House guidance for your entity type before you rely on it. The principle is settled. The precise date for a given member is worth checking.

What do I actually have to do?

Verify once, keep the eleven character personal code you are given, and make sure that code reaches whoever files for the firm before the confirmation statement goes in.

1. Verify your identity, either through GOV.UK One Login, which is free and takes one sitting with a passport or driving licence, or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, which most accountants and solicitors can act as, usually for a fee.
2. Keep the code somewhere you will find it again. It is tied to you rather than to any company, so one code covers every directorship you hold now and every one you take later.
3. Look up the firm's next confirmation statement date on the register and work backwards from it.
4. Collect codes from every director, every LLP member, and every person with significant control. Not just the people who answer emails quickly.
5. Hand the codes to whoever files, and keep a simple record of who has verified and who has not, so the gap is visible before the deadline rather than after it.

That is the whole job. It is not difficult. It is just nobody's.

Why this is a finance function problem and not an admin job

The real cost of missing this is not the fine, it is a rejected filing, because a rejected confirmation statement becomes a late one.

A late confirmation statement is an offence, and left unresolved it puts the company's standing on the register at risk. For a regulated firm that is a different order of problem from a modest court fine. Lenders read the register. So do professional indemnity insurers, panel managers, referrers, and any client who thinks to look you up before instructing you. A firm that sells judgement and discretion cannot afford a visible filing failure, whatever the underlying reason for it.

This obligation also sits exactly where things go missing in a professional services firm. The cashier does the cashiering. The bookkeeper records what happened. The accountant files the year end. The practice management system reports on matters and work in progress, the accounting system reports on the ledger, and the confirmation statement date sits in neither, so it ends up with whoever noticed it last. That is not a competence problem. It is a structural one, and it is the same reason firms discover lock up has drifted or that a fee earner has been unprofitable for two quarters.

The wider picture for owner managed professional services firms is a familiar squeeze. Compliance obligations keep rising, high street costs keep rising, and fees cannot keep rising unless there is real merit behind the increase, because clients will not wear it and competitors will not follow. Identity verification is one more obligation arriving with no fee attached to it. The only sensible response is to make the obligation cheap to meet by giving it an owner and a date, rather than absorbing it as another interruption.

AI Finance Partners works with professional services firms turning over £500k to £5m across Surrey, Sussex, Kent and the wider South East, and we put dates like this one into the monthly reporting cycle so they surface before the filing window opens rather than after it closes. If you want a read of how your firm looks from the outside before you fix anything, the Outside View is a free written assessment built only from public sources, including the register entries this article is about. If you would rather know who would actually be doing the work, the people behind AI Finance Partners are here.

Common questions

When do I need to verify my identity with Companies House? Your deadline is the date your company next files its confirmation statement, not November 2026. The filing will be rejected unless every director supplies a personal code. If you hold more than one directorship, the earliest confirmation statement date across all of them is the one that governs you, so check all of them rather than the one you think of first.

What happens if I miss the deadline? The confirmation statement is rejected, which makes it late. A late confirmation statement is an offence and, left unresolved, puts the company's standing on the register at risk. Companies House secured its first convictions for acting as an unverified director in September 2026, so the enforcement position is no longer theoretical.

Does identity verification apply to LLP members? Yes. Members of limited liability partnerships are caught on terms equivalent to company directors, which is why this lands squarely on law firms and accountancy practices. An LLP with eight members has eight people to verify, not one, and the filing fails on the slowest of them.

How do I verify my identity, and what is a personal code? You verify once, either free through GOV.UK One Login using a passport or driving licence, or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider such as your accountant or solicitor. You then receive an eleven character personal code. It belongs to you rather than to the company, so it covers every directorship you hold now and any you take on later.

Who in the firm should own this? Somebody has to own the date, and in most firms nobody does. The confirmation statement falls between the practice management system and the accounting system, so it tends to land with whoever noticed it last. AI Finance Partners puts the date into the monthly reporting cycle, which is the cheapest way to stop it becoming a surprise.

AI Finance Partners is a management accountancy and advisory practice and an outsourced finance function for professional services firms in the South East, founded and led by Andrew Isaacs, a CIMA Member in Practice and Practising Certificate Holder. If your firm has outgrown its systems and nobody owns the dates, we should talk.