Companies House
Search companies and individuals in the United Kingdom.
URL
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/
Description
Use Companies House to get information on companies registered in the UK - it's the official register of companies (so a government agency collates the data).
Anyone wanting to operate a limited company in the UK has to register with them. This includes a limited company (Ltd), public limited company (PLC), or limited liability partnership (LLP). The size of the company does not determine the requirement to register. Sole traders don't have to register; nor do partnerships (without limited liability) - those are companies that involve two or more people that share ownership. Companies House is also responsible for dissolving companies.
For each company, Companies House publishes:
Basic company details (registration number, registered office address, incorporation date, company type, status and standard industrial categorisation (SIC code)
Directors, company secretary and PSCs (people with significant control)
Shareholding info
Annual financial statements.
The site has a simple search by company or person name. The advanced search allows you to filter (e.g. by status), and to download a CSV of search results (which will include only the first 5,000 results).
You can also search for UK companies on OpenCorporates and North Data, but you are more likely to find up-to-date financial statements on Companies House. North Data may have other useful information (e.g. a graphic timeline of the company history and a network diagram of people and related companies).
The Register of Overseas Entities is also published on Companies House. It's the register of overseas entities that own land or property in the UK, which are required to declare their beneficial owners and/or managing officers. To search for them use the advanced search function and change the company type filter to ‘overseas entity’. If you then select search, you'll see the first 10,000 records on the register. Use other filters (e.g. the incorporation date filter, or part of the company name) to narrow down your search results.
You can download all the basic company data of live companies on the register. This would be useful for things like compiling statistics on the number of company formations in a particular year, or a geographical analysis of all registered addresses.
Note that companies in overseas territories (e.g. Gibraltar) don't need to register with Companies House - for such companies, go to the territory's registry.
Cost
Level of difficulty
Requirements
No registration is required and the site is free.
Limitations
A lot of data is stored as scanned PDFs so you can't copy text from them (e.g. annual returns).
Companies House states that they don't check the accuracy of information that companies submit; they just check that submissions are complete (see this in the section "Company Information supplied by Companies House" on this page).
Applications can be made to redact Companies House data. This is usually done for privacy reasons, for instance for residential addresses (see more: How to Protect Your Personal Information on the Companies House Register).
Ethical Considerations
This is public facing information. As company officers have the option to remove sensitive information about themselves, the ethical considerations are limited (see more here: Removing your home address from the Companies House register).
Guide
Creating with Data: Exploring data from Companies House (Video guide to simple and advanced search and the API)
Companies House: Searching the Companies House register
Companies House: YouTube channel
Beauhurst Limited: How To Get The Most Out of Companies House Data (scroll down to 'The Basics of Companies House')
Companies House guide for using their API
Jonas Montenarh, Simon Marsden: Unmasking the oligarchs – Using open source data to detect sanctions violations (journal paper that describes various uses of Companies House data)
Tool provider
Department for Business and Trade, UK
Advertising Trackers
Katherine de Tolly
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