Missed your ID verification deadline? Here's what Companies House can actually do about it

18 November 2025 was the date when the new requirement for UK company directors to verify their IDs commenced. This date wasn't a deadline. Companies House says so itself, in its own words: "This date is not a deadline. It marks the start of a 12-month transition period." That transition period ends on 18 November 2026 - and the part almost nobody's been told is that your own date probably falls a long way before it.

That's because Companies House doesn't ask everybody to submit their 11-character personal code on the same day. If you're a director, your date is tied to your company's confirmation statement. If you're a PSC (Person with Significant Control) and not a director, your submission date is the first 14 days of your birth month - nothing to do with your company at all. If you're both, you've got two dates. And there's usually no letter, no email and no reminder to tell you any of these dates have arrived.

So the real question isn't whether you've got until November 2026. It's whether you've already gone past your own date without noticing. If you have, you're not in a grey area: Companies House says that if you don't comply with all the ID verification requirements on time you may be committing an offence, and that if you carry on acting as a director after your deadline without complying, you'll be committing one.

This post is what that means in practice - the default letter, the financial penalty, the prosecution, the note against your name on the public register - and what to do if you're already late. It's fixable, and it's fixable today. But it doesn't fix itself, and there's one reason to sort it out now rather than in November 2026 that's got nothing to do with Companies House at all.

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Your submission deadline probably isn't 18 November 2026

18 November 2026 is the end of the run-in for everybody who was already a director or a PSC on 18 November 2025. It isn't the date most people are actually working to, because Companies House doesn't ask everybody to submit their 11-character personal code at once. It asks you when your company's paperwork next falls due.

If you're a director, GOV.UK is explicit: "You will need to provide your Companies House personal code as part of your company's next confirmation statement." So your real date is your company's confirmation statement date. If that fell in March, your date was in March, and 18 November 2026 was never your deadline.

If you're a PSC and not a director, your date has nothing to do with the company's paperwork: "You must provide your personal code within the first 14 days of your birth month." Born in April, and your window opened on 1 April and closed on the 14th. You can check the dates of your own 14 day period on the Companies House register, which is the only place they're written down.

And if you're both a director and a PSC of the same company - which is most people who own and run their own business - you've got two separate dates, two separate submissions and two separate chances to be late. Companies House won't let you make both submissions at once, which is exactly the sort of needless red tape that makes this whole system so much harder than it needs to be. We've set the whole of that out in PSC ID verification: why Companies House makes you send the same 11-character personal code twice.

What none of this comes with is a warning. Nothing arrives in the post to tell you your window has opened, nothing tells you it's closed, and nothing on your confirmation statement says a second submission is still outstanding. Companies House does write to you eventually - but that letter is the one that tells you you're already in default, and it's the beginning of the part of this post you'd rather not need.

What actually happens when you're late

Companies House has published exactly how it intends to deal with people who haven't complied, and it's worth reading properly, because it's a ladder rather than a single event.

It starts gently. Companies House describes the first rungs as informing and nudging - emails, webinars, guidance, the sort of thing that's easy to file under "later". Then, in its own words, "we will send them a default letter. This letter will set out the offence of not complying with identity verification requirements."

That letter is the moment it stops being administrative. From there, Companies House says it has three routes, and it can take more than one of them:

• prosecution through the courts;
• referral to the Insolvency Service;
• financial penalties.

On penalties it's blunt: "We may issue financial penalties at company or individual officer level where directors or PSCs fail to comply with identity verification requirements." Read that twice - at company "or individual officer" level. The penalty can land on you personally, not just on the company.

On prosecution, it's blunter still: "Prosecution may lead to criminal conviction, director disqualification and fines." And it treats three or more offences within five years as serious, which makes prosecution more likely rather than less.

Alongside all of that, Companies House can annotate the public register - a note against your name, visible to anyone who looks your company up. That includes your bank, your customers and anybody doing due diligence on you.

Directors are already being prosecuted

This isn't a warning that sits on a GOV.UK page and goes no further. On 16 September 2026, three directors of two UK companies were convicted and fined at City of London Magistrates' Court — the first prosecutions the Insolvency Service has brought over the ID verification requirements.

Two of them had carried on acting as directors without verifying their IDs, taking part in board decisions and signing company accounts. The third had verified his own ID, and he was prosecuted anyway: for failing to take reasonable steps to stop his unverified co-director from carrying on as a director. So if one of your fellow directors hasn't verified, that's your problem too — not only theirs.

All three were also convicted because their companies hadn't filed a confirmation statement on time. The fines ran from £80 to £307 each, with £85 costs and a victim surcharge on top. These were fines imposed by a court, not Companies House's own financial penalties, which are set out below. The fines were modest; the criminal conviction that comes with them isn't.

And both directors who hadn't verified had done so by the time they got to court — one of them around nine months after her deadline. Verifying late didn't stop the prosecution. It also didn't come out of the blue: the Insolvency Service says that "multiple opportunities were provided for the directors to comply with the requirements before enforcement action was taken." That's the ladder described above, followed all the way to the top.

The Insolvency Service put it plainly: "There is no option to opt out." And GOV.UK's announcement ends by telling any director who still hasn't verified to do it "as soon as possible", either free through Companies House or through an ACSP (Authorised Corporate Service Provider) — which is exactly what directorverifications.com is.

What a financial penalty actually costs

Companies House publishes its penalty scale, and it works by how serious the offence is and how many times you've done it. A penalty can be a fixed amount, a daily rate for every day the offence continues, or both together.

How Companies House rates it	First offence	Second	Third	Fourth or more
Minor	£250	£500	£750	£1,000
Serious	£500	£750	£1,000	£1,500
Very serious	£750	£1,000	£1,500	£2,000

There's a process before any of that lands, and it's worth knowing because it's your chance to fix things. Companies House issues a warning notice first: "If the registrar suspects that a person has engaged in conduct amounting to a relevant offence, the registrar may issue a warning notice in writing to that person." You then get "at least 28 days beginning the day after the warning notice date" to make representations. Only after that period can a penalty notice follow, and you get at least another 28 days to pay.

So a warning notice isn't a bill. It's a window. If you verify your ID and submit your 11-character personal code inside it, you've dealt with the thing the notice is about.

The things you can no longer do

This is the part that catches people who thought a penalty was the worst of it. Companies House has said that in future it will publish a note against your name on the public register, and that you'll also be unable to:

• be appointed as a new director to an existing company;
• register a new company or entity;
• register as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider.

If you set up a company for each new venture, the second of those matters more to you than any fine: an unverified director can't register a new company at all.

Your company's confirmation statement

There's one more consequence, and it's the one that turns your problem into the company's problem. Companies House won't accept a company's confirmation statement until every director has verified their ID and provided their 11-character personal code. One unverified director holds up the whole filing.

That's worth thinking about if you're not the only director. Your date might have passed quietly, but the company's confirmation statement is a hard filing with its own consequences, and the two are now tied together.

What to do if you're already late

The good news is that being late isn't a permanent state, and putting it right isn't complicated. There are two jobs and they're separate:

1. Verify your ID. This can be done today. It isn't tied to any deadline and there's nothing to wait for.
2. Submit your 11-character personal code to Companies House. As a director that's in your company's confirmation statement - and the company can file that early, at any point it likes, with every director's code in it. As a PSC it's through the separate Companies House service called "Provide identity verification details for a PSC".

Doing job 1 today is what stops the clock running. If you've had a warning notice, doing both inside the 28 days is what deals with it.

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The one reason to sort it out now, and it's got nothing to do with Companies House

Here's the part nobody tells you, and it's the reason leaving it until November is a worse idea than it looks.

There are two ways to verify your ID. The government's own route is GOV.UK One Login, and it's free. Or you can use an ACSP (Authorised Corporate Service Provider) such as directorverifications.com, which costs £24.99 per person (or £39.99 for our Fast Track service). Our ACSP verification service page walks through what happens once you’ve signed up to use our ID verification service.

The government route is free and for some people it works. But it asks a great deal more of you: you have to set up a GOV.UK One Login and install an app on your phone before it will even look at your documents. It's also built around UK documents and UK addresses, and it turns away a great many people who hold non-UK passports or live outside the UK. And if it refuses you, you don't get a second government attempt. You may find yourself locked out of GOV.UK One Login for weeks or even months, and there's no second free route sitting behind it, ready and waiting. The Post Office route is closed to you as well once the GOV.UK One Login has refused you.

We know this at first hand - it happened to one of our own directors, and the Companies House helpline told him the only route left was an ACSP. That's the whole reason our service was set up.

So, if you're already late and you try the free route in the last week before your deadline, and it says no, you've got nothing left and little time in which to find something else. That's the real risk in leaving it - not the fine.

How to fix it today

directorverifications.com is an ACSP - a trading style of Finovium Limited, a firm of accountants in West London - and it appears on the list of ACSPs that Companies House publishes, as FINOVIUM LIMITED ACSP.

• Standard verification, £24.99 per person, 24-48 hours on weekdays. No app to install on your phone, no GOV.UK One Login, no UK address needed, and nothing for you to post.
• Fast Track, £39.99 per person, same day, when your payment and your ID document both reach us before 5pm, seven days a week.
• If our automated, AI-powered check cannot verify your ID, a member of our team reviews your documents by hand. That's included in the price - we'll never charge you twice.
• The price is per person whose ID we verify, not per company - and once you're verified, the same 11-character personal code can be used across every company you're involved with, for years to come; in fact, forever.

Get verified for £24.99 · Get Fast Track, same day, for £39.99

Frequently asked questions

I've missed my date. Am I actually breaking the law?

Companies House puts it this way: if you don't comply with all the ID verification requirements on time you may be committing an offence, and if you carry on acting as a director after your deadline without complying, you will be committing one. It's not a grey area, but it's fixable, and verifying your ID is the thing that fixes it.

Will I definitely be fined?

No. Companies House starts with letters and a default letter, and it has to issue a warning notice before any penalty, giving you at least 28 days to respond. A penalty is what happens when nothing changes after that.

How much is the fine?

Fixed penalties run from £250 for a first minor offence to £2,000 for a fourth or subsequent very serious one, and there can be a daily rate on top for as long as the offence continues.

I've had a letter from Companies House. What do I do first?

Verify your ID. It's the one step that can be done immediately and it's the thing the letter is about. Then submit your 11-character personal code, either in the company's confirmation statement or through the PSC service, depending on which applies to you.

Can you deal with Companies House for me?

We verify your ID and we submit your verified information to Companies House, which then emails your 11-character personal code direct to your inbox. We don't submit your personal code to Companies House for you, and no ACSP will - that submission requirement will always be your task. We'll show you exactly where it goes.

My company's confirmation statement is due and one director still isn't verified. What happens?

Companies House won't accept the confirmation statement until every director has verified. The filing waits until they do, so it's worth chasing the last one rather than waiting.