UK company registers shake-up

From 18 November 2025, companies incorporated in the UK will no longer need to maintain their own registers of directors, directors' residential addresses, company secretaries, and people with significant control (PSCs). Companies House will instead hold the information centrally on its register, the purpose of which is to improve the accuracy and integrity of the public register by establishing a single source of truth. Given the vast majority of information recorded in local registers is already required to be notified to Companies House, this is a welcome simplification.

It is important to note that these reforms do not affect the obligation on companies to hold a register of members (i.e. shareholders). In a somewhat contradictory move, Companies House will be removing the option for private companies to elect to store their register of members centrally at Companies House so all companies will now need to keep and maintain a local register of members.

If your company previously held a register of members centrally at Companies House, from 18 November 2025, your company will have to:

1. Create and maintain a local register of members.
2. Hold a copy of that register at its registered office address or SAIL address.
3. Contain a statement in the register that before this change, the information about the company’s members was held on the ‘central register’.
4. Make this register available for the public to view.

Smaller consequential changes stemming from these reforms include removing the need to provide a business occupation for company directors and requiring a statement that the director is not disqualified under the directors’ disqualification legislation or otherwise ineligible to be appointed by virtue of any other legislation, in each case at the point of registering their appointment.

These reforms coincide with the introduction of mandatory identity verification for individual directors, PSCs, and members of LLPs, also taking effect on 18 November 2025, as part of the major reforms under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA). You can read more about the mandatory identity verification regime here.