Corporate report

Companies House business plan 2025 to 2026

Published 17 June 2025

1. Who we are

Companies House is an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade (DBT). We hold the United Kingdom’s register of companies and the Register of Overseas Entities.   

2. What we do 

Companies House drives confidence in the economy by promoting a transparent and accountable business environment.

We are responsible for:

• incorporating, maintaining and dissolving limited companies
• examining and publishing company information
• holding and maintaining the Register of Overseas Entities (ROE), providing transparency about who owns land and/or property in the UK
• promoting corporate transparency

Use of our data informs business and consumer decisions, supports growth and helps disrupt economic crime.

We are a key contributor to the cross-government approach to preventing, detecting and disrupting economic crime. We carry out intelligence analysis on the data we hold and proactively share information with trusted external partners.  

Companies House also has a well-regarded reputation on the global stage. We play an active role in the Corporate Registers Forum (CRF) and European Business Registry Association (EBRA) - two of the leading international associations of business registries.   

3. Our priorities for 2025 to 2026

Our annual business plan sets out our priority commitments for the year ahead.

We will publish a new strategy for 2025 to 2030 later in 2025. This business plan is aligned to the new strategy.

3.1 Authoritative and transparent data

Making sure the data on our registers is trusted to be accurate and reliable, and can be easily accessed, will increase its value to our users and support economic growth. Realising the full value of our data relies on increasing its quality and interoperability.

Implementation of legislative reforms, use of our new powers, modernisation of our technology and implementation of data governance are essential enablers of our data ambitions. As we continue to use our new powers to cleanse the registers, where we identify inaccurate or misleading information we will test new approaches, learning and iterating these as we introduce further new powers.

In 2025 to 2026 we will:

1. Scale up our data quality assurance and governance framework to continue to build up our data maturity across Companies House. This includes improvements in data literacy for senior data governance roles and increased adoption of government data standards into our digital services.

2. Develop our new cloud data platform to mature our tooling, data access and skills. This will increase our speed and agility to better support improvements in data quality, performance reporting and segmentation.

3. With the implementation of identity verification, carry out essential monitoring of the register’s identity data and their associated impacts during the transition.

4. Profile the quality of core address and accounts data to monitor adherence to  respective standards.

5. Develop a new performance framework to inform implementation of our new strategy and reforms, future public target setting and service iterations.

3.2 Preventing, detecting and disrupting economic crime

We know that abuse of the registers has grown over recent years and has the potential to continue to grow. In 2024, we published a strategic intelligence assessment which provides an in-depth analysis of the key threats Companies House is facing, together with recommendations and action plans. This informs our activities to address the abuse of UK corporate structures that facilitate economic crime.

In 2025 to 2026 we will:

1. Develop a more sophisticated and segmented approach to compliance, targeting those individuals and companies with the worst compliance. Where necessary, we will remove companies from the register who continue to fail to comply with their legal obligations.

2. Use our data capabilities to monitor levels of suspicious activity, aligned with our strategic intelligence assessment and our compliance segmentation. This will enable us to expand our understanding of suspicious behaviour, deploy disruption tactics to prevent companies being used for illegitimate purposes, and mature our control strategy and compliance checks.

3. Develop automated risk assessment capabilities, utilising artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as well as creating new options for data exchange, to enable more sophisticated targeting of our activity. This will be integrated with our existing compliance and enforcement services.

4. Develop an effective compliance and enforcement regime to support the requirement for third party agents to become registered with Companies House as Authorised Corporate Service Providers (ACSPs). This will make sure that relevant intelligence is shared between Companies House and anti-money laundering (AML) supervisors

5. Identify new ways of working with The Insolvency Service (INSS), to maximise the opportunities available through the combination of registrars’ powers and INSS’s capabilities, such as disqualifying directors and pursuing criminal prosecutions.

6. Work closely with both the INSS and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), helping tackle tax evasion through greater collaboration between our organisations.

3.3 Implementing reforms to the UK’s company law framework

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA) introduced new registrars’ objectives and enhanced powers to improve the integrity of the registers. We will continue to implement these reforms in phases.

In 2025 to 2026 we will:

1. Make identity verification compulsory for new directors and people with significant control (PSCs) and begin the transition period for existing directors and PSCs. For the first time, individuals filing information with Companies House will need to prove they are who they claim to be.

2. Make it compulsory for third party agents filing on behalf of companies to be an ACSP. This will support tackling the residual vulnerabilities on the registers and limiting the abuse of corporate structures.

3. Launch further measures to enable individuals to protect personal information from disclosure on the register by introducing the ability to apply to suppress additional information. These measures are designed to protect more individuals from harm and further reduce the risk of fraud.

4. Provide the ability to access to certain trust information on the Register of Overseas Entities on request, increasing transparency of overseas ownership of UK assets.

5. Continue to work with DBT to lay the secondary legislation required to enact the ECCTA.

6. Continue comprehensive multi-channel communication of the changes to UK company law and what our customers and/or their agents need to do and by when. We will also continue to engage and collaborate with key stakeholders through our established forums and networks.

7. Monitor and evaluate the implementation of the ECCTA, specifically the utilisation of the registrars’ querying powers and sanctions, and the implementation of identity verification. We will link this to key outcomes of addressing unlawful activity, compliance and the value of Companies House data.

3.4 Providing seamless services

Our aim is to provide simple and accessible services to keep legitimate business activity moving and our registers up to date and accurate. Supported by investment in our technology over the next 5 years, we will make sure our services provide a seamless customer and user experience.

As we develop and improve our customer facing services and internal processes, this year and in the future, we will continue to seek and monitor efficiencies across our work. We will also continue to identify opportunities to collaborate across government to provide efficient, joined up services for our customers.

In 2025 to 2026 we will:

1. Continue to deliver excellent customer service levels and maintain our business as usual services as we implement significant change.

2. Introduce new digital contact channels (including webchat and chatbot) that will enable our customers to reach the right support more quickly and will reduce the burden on customers to provide information multiple times.

3. Produce new clear and accessible guidance, to enable people to find information that is relevant to them faster, encouraging increased self-service options and faster resolution of issues.

4. Develop an online confirmation statement journey for all directors, PSCs and presenters.

3.5 Modernising our technology

Over the coming strategy period (2025 to 2030) we have committed to simplifying and modernising our digital infrastructure, migrating away from legacy technology. We will build resilient, flexible infrastructure that can scale to user demand and allow us to exploit new opportunities in technology for greater efficiency and customer interactions.

In 2025 to 2026 we will:

1. Begin a programme of updating our software and infrastructure, providing cost savings on licences and improving performance.

2. Make business improvements alongside essential service upgrades to our information processing systems. This will make our internal systems more reliable and effective, so that staff can work more efficiently.

3. Migrate our on-premise corporate finance solution to the cloud and complete a comprehensive upgrade.

4. Grow our service led digital teams, so that we can deliver new services required by legislative reforms, and improve existing digital services. Increased digital capacity will allow us to work more flexibly across our competing priorities and respond to evolving needs.

5. Expand our use of AI tools including coding assistants, analytics tools and administration tools. In the coming year we will start to operationalise our use of AI, in line with the AI playbook for the UK Government.

6. Continue the development of our innovative security capabilities to ensure Companies House remains responsive to the changing risk landscape for government.

3.6 Evolving our culture and conditions

During the coming year we will significantly grow our capacity to enable us to implement legislative reforms, transform our digital and data capabilities and maintain our core operations and customer service levels.

Significant change and a renewed strategy mean we need to evolve our operating model, capabilities and capacity to meet our ambitions - assembling our people around the public services we provide. This work has begun with digital and data focused non-executive director appointments and will continue in the coming year.

In 2025 to 2026 we will:

1. Make further changes to our structure to align with our new strategy, including new executive board appointments to focus on transformation, change and service delivery.

2. Support our extensive and complex business growth through high volume, customised recruitment and innovative outreach and resourcing strategies to attract, source and recruit diverse talent.

3. Build robust internal talent pipelines by investing in the development of our existing staff, particularly in digital, data and technology, and intelligence. This will include implementing targeted training, mentorship programmes and clear career progression pathways to cultivate new and emerging skills.

4. Expand talent acquisition through external outreach in high demand fields. This will include targeted recruitment campaigns, strategic partnerships with higher education and industry bodies, and participation in relevant industry events to attract qualified candidates for roles throughout all professions and priority areas.

5. Re-launch our culture, values, behaviours and ways of working around our new role, aligned with our new strategy.

6. Continue to resource and build a central team to co-ordinate our activity in countering fraud, corruption and bribery, ensuring compliance with government functional standards.

4. Measures of success

Our measures of success reflect the most significant commitments in our business plan. These are agreed with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets), and published in both Houses.

Throughout the year we track and report progress against the delivery of these measures to our executive and main boards, and to the Minister through DBT. 

4.1 Measures of success for 2025 to 2026

1. 82% of customers are satisfied with Companies House.

2. All incoming calls to our contact centre wait for no longer than 5 minutes in the call queues, on average.

3. Digital services are available for a minimum of 99.5% of the time.

4. Deliver 4% efficiency, in comparison to 2024 to 2025.

5. Use our new powers to enforce our registrars’ objectives by taking action in relation to 150,000 companies.

6. Implement compulsory identity verification for all new directors and PSCs and begin the transition period for existing directors and PSCs during the second half of the financial year.

We will publish quarterly performance information, commencing from the mandatory period, on the number and percentage of appointments that comply with identity verification.

5. Monitoring and reporting 

Companies House regularly monitors and reports progress against the commitments in this business plan throughout the year. Parliament and the public can review how Companies House is performing in our annual report and accounts.  

You can find more information in Companies House official statistics and other public datasets.  

Reports on the implementation and operation of parts 1 to 3 of the ECCT Act 2023 will be laid in Parliament in line with the statutory requirements. 

6. Funding the plan 

Companies House is primarily funded through fees which are charged for our services. We also receive funding via DBT to support our transformation programme, and for the pursuit of financial penalties where it is considered inappropriate to charge legitimate enterprises for the pursuit of penalties from those that have not complied.   

Fees are set on a cost recovery basis. This means that our fees must cover the cost of the services we deliver. We do not intentionally make a surplus on our fees. 

Our fees also support joint working with INSS, including the majority of the agency’s investigation and enforcement work, to uphold the Companies Act and tackle economic crime through corporate structures.  

In spring 2025 we will review our fees to ensure the short to medium term financial sustainability of Companies House as we deliver on the registrars’ new powers and the wider package of legislative reforms.  While we will continue to review our fees every year to make sure they are set at the right level, we will, through our planning, try to avoid volatility in the fee where possible.  

Companies House activity contributing to delivery on economic crime plan 2 (2023 to 2026) benefits from funding via the Economic Crime (anti-money laundering) Levy (ECL) until the end of March 2026.

7. Budget

Delegation	2025 to 2026
Resource	£ million
Transformation and service delivery	-1.86
Filing penalties	2.5
Economic Crime Levy (to be confirmed via supplementary estimates)	2.639
DEL programme total	3.279
DEL ringfenced total (to be confirmed via supplementary estimates)	10
Capital
Transformation and service delivery	18.896