Nearly four million people had verified their identity with Companies House by the middle of June 2026, out of an estimated six to seven million who need to. That leaves a very large group of directors sitting on a legal duty they still have not touched. The transition window shuts in November 2026.
Verification stopped being optional on 18 November 2025. Since then, anyone taking a new directorship has to prove who they are before they can act, and every existing director has been given a personal deadline somewhere inside a twelve-month period. Most people heard about it from their accountant, or not at all.
The check itself is not the hard part. You verify once through GOV.UK One Login with a passport or another accepted document; it costs nothing, and Companies House puts the average completion time at roughly two and a half minutes. You can also pay an authorised corporate service provider, usually an accountant, solicitor, or formation agent, to run the check for you.
Verification hands you one personal code that unlocks every directorship you hold. The code belongs to you rather than to any company, so you do the work once and reuse the result. You still have to supply that code separately for each business where you sit on the board, and that second step is where plenty of people stall.
Anyone starting a brand new limited company in Britain now verifies before the incorporation is accepted at all. Directors of dormant companies get no free pass either. The duty attaches to the person, not to how busy the business happens to be.
Directors who are also PSCs work to the confirmation statement date instead, which spares them the birthday maths. New PSCs registered after 18 November 2025 count their fourteen days from the registration date. Three different clocks, one register, and the burden of knowing which one applies sits with you.
Acting as a director without verification is an offence under the Companies Act 2006. Before anything reaches a courtroom, the registrar can restrict your filings, block new incorporations, and issue a civil penalty instead. Those penalties currently run from £250 for a minor first offence to £2,000 for a repeat serious one, capped at £10,000 per offence.
Money is the smaller problem. An unverified director cannot be appointed anywhere new, and the public register can carry a note against your name, which is exactly the sort of detail a lender or a buyer reads first. Filing costs have already climbed, with digital incorporation doubling to £100 and the confirmation statement rising to £50 from 1 February 2026.
Filers are the one group still waiting. Verification for the people who submit documents on behalf of companies has been pushed back to no earlier than November 2026, after an earlier spring target slipped. Directors and PSCs got no such reprieve, and at the halfway mark in May, only about a third of them had finished.
Verification stopped being optional on 18 November 2025. Since then, anyone taking a new directorship has to prove who they are before they can act, and every existing director has been given a personal deadline somewhere inside a twelve-month period. Most people heard about it from their accountant, or not at all.
The check itself is not the hard part. You verify once through GOV.UK One Login with a passport or another accepted document; it costs nothing, and Companies House puts the average completion time at roughly two and a half minutes. You can also pay an authorised corporate service provider, usually an accountant, solicitor, or formation agent, to run the check for you.
Your next confirmation statement sets the real deadline
Existing directors do not share one national cut-off date. Your deadline is tied to the filing date of your company's next confirmation statement after 18 November 2025, which is why some directors were caught back in December, and others still have months in hand. Late on that filing means late on this, no matter how distant November looks.Verification hands you one personal code that unlocks every directorship you hold. The code belongs to you rather than to any company, so you do the work once and reuse the result. You still have to supply that code separately for each business where you sit on the board, and that second step is where plenty of people stall.
Anyone starting a brand new limited company in Britain now verifies before the incorporation is accepted at all. Directors of dormant companies get no free pass either. The duty attaches to the person, not to how busy the business happens to be.
People with significant control get only fourteen days
Own or control a company without being a director, and your window is tighter, plus a little strange. Non-director PSCs get fourteen days starting on the first day of their birth month, so someone born in August 2026 has until 14 August to hand over their code. Nobody sends you a reminder card about it.Directors who are also PSCs work to the confirmation statement date instead, which spares them the birthday maths. New PSCs registered after 18 November 2025 count their fourteen days from the registration date. Three different clocks, one register, and the burden of knowing which one applies sits with you.
The penalties start small and climb with every miss
Companies House spent the transition on education rather than prosecution and said so openly. That stance was always temporary. Compliance work against people who have not verified was flagged publicly at the start of 2026, and the closer November gets, the thinner the patience.Acting as a director without verification is an offence under the Companies Act 2006. Before anything reaches a courtroom, the registrar can restrict your filings, block new incorporations, and issue a civil penalty instead. Those penalties currently run from £250 for a minor first offence to £2,000 for a repeat serious one, capped at £10,000 per offence.
Money is the smaller problem. An unverified director cannot be appointed anywhere new, and the public register can carry a note against your name, which is exactly the sort of detail a lender or a buyer reads first. Filing costs have already climbed, with digital incorporation doubling to £100 and the confirmation statement rising to £50 from 1 February 2026.
Filers are the one group still waiting. Verification for the people who submit documents on behalf of companies has been pushed back to no earlier than November 2026, after an earlier spring target slipped. Directors and PSCs got no such reprieve, and at the halfway mark in May, only about a third of them had finished.
