Companies House is the UK government’s register of companies. Every limited company and limited liability partnership in the UK must register there, and the register is public: anyone can look up a company’s registered name, number, registered office address, officers and filed accounts free of charge.
How Companies House works
Companies House is an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade. When a company is formed it receives a company number, usually eight characters long, with a prefix such as SC for Scotland or NI for Northern Ireland. The number stays the same even if the company changes its name, which makes it the most reliable way to identify a business.
Companies must keep their record up to date: confirmation statements, annual accounts, changes of director or address, and details of the people with significant control. Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, Companies House gained stronger powers to query and remove information, companies must give a registered email address, and the registered office must be an appropriate address rather than a PO box. Identity verification for directors and people with significant control is being phased in; at the time of writing (October 2026), check the current Companies House guidance for the deadlines that apply to you.
Sole traders and ordinary partnerships are not registered at Companies House. They have their own, lighter disclosure rules when they trade under a business name.
Why it matters
For marketing, Companies House is the record of who you legally are. A UK company’s website must show its registered name, company number, the part of the UK it is registered in and its registered office address. These trading disclosures usually sit in the footer or on a legal page, and buyers, journalists and reviewers use them as a quick check that a business is real.
The same details feed your structured data. Organisation schema can carry the legal name (the legalName property) and the company number (as an identifier), which can help search engines connect your website, your Google Business Profile and other mentions of the business. Where the trading name differs from the registered name, for example a café trading under one name while registered as the owner’s limited company, stating both removes the ambiguity.
Your registered office address is also public. If it is an accountant’s or a formation agent’s address, it should not appear as your trading address in local listings, or your NAP consistency suffers and customers may turn up at the wrong door.
Common mistakes
- No company number or registered office on the website, or details left over from before a name change.
- Using a formation agent’s registered office as the business address on Google Business Profile.
- Structured data that gives a legal name different from the one on the register, often the trading name in its place.
- Letting the register fall behind after a move, so the address on Companies House contradicts the website.
- Forgetting that the register is permanent and public. What you file there, including addresses, can be seen by anyone.
How to act on it
Look your company up on the Companies House register and copy the exact registered name, number and office address. Check that your website footer or legal page shows them, that your terms and privacy notice name the same entity, and that your structured data uses the same legal name and number.
Then decide which address is your public trading address and use it consistently across your site, Google Business Profile and directories, keeping the registered office for legal disclosures if it is different. Adding company details correctly to structured data is part of my schema markup and structured data work.