Provide a verification statement as a person with significant control (PSC )
Companies House's Provide a verification statement as a person with significant control (PSC) alpha assessment report
Service standard report
Provide a verification statement as a PSC
| Assessment date | 11/06/2025 |
| Assessment stage | Alpha |
| Assessment type | Assessment |
| Service provider | Companies House |
| Result | Green |
Service description
A person with significant control (PSC) is someone who holds 25% or more of a limited company’s shares, or another form of control of a company. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 sets a new legal requirement for company directors and PSCs to verify their identity. Once a user’s identity is verified, they’re given a Companies House personal code. They must provide this code and a verification statement for each PSC role they hold, as confirmation that their identity is verified to fully comply with the ID verification legal requirements. Each PSC will have a deadline, by which they need to meet their ID verification requirements for each they are a PSC of. There are currently approx. 6 million PSCs.
This service enables a PSC to:
- provide their Companies House personal code and verification
statement - request a 14-day extension, if they need more time
Service users
- people with significant control (PSCs) – providing their own
verification details - other presenters – representatives of the company, or agents acting
on behalf of the company or PSC themselves (experienced users -
such as accountants) - internal team members – who will process statement filings, if
manual intervention is required, and requests for extensions made
through the service
Things the service team has done well:
-
the team clearly had a very good understanding of the users and their needs. They had used effective recruitment methods to get those hard-to-reach users with whom Companies House had little/no previous contact.
-
the team had recruited a wide range of users, some of whom had access needs or lower levels of digital skills and confidence.
-
the team have embraced agile and iterative working and have incorporated lessons learned from this experience into their forward Beta plan.
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- moving into Beta, it would be helpful to be more systematic about recording types of access needs and levels of digital inclusion.
2. Solve a whole problem for users
Decision
The service was rated green for point 2 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- it is important that the team take an end-to-end journey approach from a user perspective as this is made up of different components/services, as well as dependencies on other service delivery within the Transformation Programme.
- while this service appears to be correctly scoped for the current context, it is part of a much wider ‘ecosystem’ of IDV for Companies House. The team should keep one eye on the long term and ensure not to close the door on possible future consolidation in this space.
3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels
Decision
The service was rated green for point 3 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- make sure the end-to-end journey from Find to Complete Transaction, both happy and unhappy path, is seamless and easy for the external users despite behind the scenes there being several component parts.
- at the Beta assessment, the team should be more explicit about the needs of, and research with internal users.
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service was rated green for point 4 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- in Beta, the team should test user journeys across the entire IDV space, not just within this specific service – true end-to-end journeys.
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 5 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- the panel understand the constraints for running a successful Private Beta prior to Public, where legislation and what can be in the public domain is limited. However, something is better than nothing and the team should look for innovative ways to ensure that Private Beta with possible proxy users, or another approach, can give them the confidence that the service is ready for Public Beta and have robust mitigation plans in place for any gaps in Private Beta testing, and how they will manage those in a user-centric way. The Lead Assessor has offered to work with the team on exploring this further as this is often a scenario experienced at DEFRA with legislation and political sensitivity.
- internal users (case management/compliance team) – the panel understand that existing operational teams will have this service added to their scope. Make sure that you have a clear understanding of their needs and work collaboratively with them to test operational needs from their perspective. Make sure that the existing service offering meets the needs of your users for this service.
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service was rated green for point 6 of the Standard.
7. Use agile ways of working
Decision
The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- we discussed Minimum Viable Product in terms of your fixed deadline – what may help is to define the red lines (absolute minimum to deliver the legislation successfully and a great user experience) and ensure that key stakeholders (including policy team) are signed up to that scope. In parallel, agree a set of criteria to review and manage new requirements for prioritisation – this ensures decisions at pace about priorities. Make sure as well that there are enough capacity/story points built into your sprint plan for supporting Private Beta and Public, while potentially delivering MVP plus.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service was rated green for point 8 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- make sure, where you have dependencies on other services to deliver your end-to-end service, that during Beta you collect insight from users during iterative testing and feedback to that service or other delivery team in the Transformation Programme.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Decision
The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service was rated Green for point 10 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
- the team have made a good start on analytics and key KPIs for the digital service but need to ensure that measuring success of the service should encompass non-digital elements of the end-to-end journey as well. A key outcome being delivered is improving data integrity so there should be targets defined and how success of achieving is measured. A Service Performance Framework based on the end-to-end journey should be developed and this can also be tested during Private Beta. This service will be added to existing operational teams for case management and compliance so it is important to establish whether their current service and SLA around that will meet the needs of your users.
11. Choose the right tools and technology
Decision
The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service was rated green for point 12 of the Standard.
https://github.com/companieshouse/psc-extensions-api
https://github.com/companieshouse/psc-extensions-web
https://github.com/companieshouse/psc-verification-api
https://github.com/companieshouse/psc-verification-web
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Decision
The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.
14. Operate a reliable service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.
Next Steps
This service can now move into a Private Beta phase, subject to getting approval from the GDS spend control team. The service must meet the standard at Beta assessment before launching Public Beta.
To get the service ready to launch on GOV.UK the team needs to:
- get a GOV.UK service domain name
- work with the GOV.UK content team on any changes required to GOV.UK content