# Companies House: check any UK company's filings and officers free

Source: https://sarang.pro/companies-house-uk-search-guide/
Author: Sarang | Published: 26 August 2025

**The site:** [Companies House: Find and update company information](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/). Cost: Free. Useful for: companies.

## What it is
Companies House is the UK's registrar of companies. It registers company information and makes it available to the public through its Find and update company information service.

GOV.UK lists what you can get free: company details such as the registered address and date of incorporation, current and resigned officers, document images, mortgage charge data, previous company names and insolvency information. You can also set up free email alerts to hear when a company updates its details. Each company page has an overview, a filing history, a people section and further information.

## Use it for
- Checking a supplier, customer or partner before you sign anything
- Reading a private competitor's filed accounts
- Seeing who the directors are and what other companies they are involved in
- Confirming a company's status, age and nature of business
For private UK companies, this is often the only official source of financial information, which makes it one of the most useful free research tools in the country.

## How to use it
- Go to the Find and update company information service and search by company name or number.
- On the overview, check the company status, type, incorporation date, registered office and nature of business (SIC).
- Note when the last accounts were made up to and when the next are due.
- Open the filing history to read the accounts and confirmation statements as document images.
- Open the people section to see officers and persons with significant control.
- Set up a free email alert if you want to follow the company.
Overdue accounts or confirmation statements are a warning sign worth noticing. The due dates sit on the overview, so the check takes seconds.

## Example
Looking up BP P.L.C. shows an active public limited company, incorporated on 14 April 1909, with a SIC code for activities of head offices. The overview also shows when the next accounts and confirmation statement are due, and the filing history holds the documents themselves.

## Watch out for
- Small companies can file limited accounts, so you may not see revenue or profit.
- Filings record what the company declared; check anything important against other sources.
- Accounts are filed months after the year end, so the figures can be out of date.
It works well alongside SEC EDGAR full-text search, Crunchbase and Internet Archive Wayback Machine.