The Deadline Isn't November

If you run a limited company, there's a date by which you have to prove to Companies House that you're a real person.

It is almost certainly not the date you think it is.

The one everybody has heard is 18 November 2026. That's when the transition period closes. It is not your deadline, and treating it as one is how a fair number of people are going to discover that theirs went past months ago.

What this is

Since 18 November 2025, identity verification at Companies House has been a legal requirement rather than a good idea. Companies House put the scale of it at "6 to 7 million individuals will need to verify their identity by mid-November 2026" — every director, and every person with significant control.

You do it once, as a person, not once per company. You come out of it with a Companies House personal code, and then you attach that code to each company role you hold.

That's the easy half. The half that catches people is when.

Why your date isn't November

Existing directors verify, in Companies House's own words, "at the same time as they file their next annual confirmation statement, during a 12-month transition period".

The confirmation statement is the annual filing that says the company still exists and its details are still right. Yours falls when it has always fallen, on a date set years ago by whenever you incorporated. If that's March, your deadline was in March. If it's October, you've got a few weeks.

So there is no single day when six million people are due. There are three hundred and sixty-five of them, and yours is already in your diary under a different name.

The rule nobody knows about: your birth month

If you're a PSC but not a director — a shareholder in your own company who never took a directorship, which is a very ordinary arrangement where a husband and wife own a business together — your deadline has nothing to do with the confirmation statement at all.

GOV.UK puts it like this: you must provide your personal code "within the first 14 days of your birth month".

Read that twice if you own a company with somebody else. It means the two of you can be on completely different deadlines, months apart, set by two entirely unrelated facts: the day the company was incorporated, and the month one of you was born.

And if you're both a director and a PSC, it's a third rule again: "within a 14 day period, starting from the day after the company's confirmation statement date".

Three rules, one company, possibly three different dates. That is the entire reason this post exists.

What actually happens if you miss it

The fine is the half everyone focuses on, and it's the less expensive one.

The government's own summary doesn't hedge: "If you do not comply with identity verification requirements on time, you'll be committing an offence. There will be a range of consequences, including a financial penalty. You will not be able to make any filings for your company or start a new company."

It's the last sentence that costs money. Not being able to file isn't paperwork going quiet. It's your accounts, your confirmation statement, a change of registered office, appointing a new director, moving shares around — all of it stopped, at whatever moment you happen to need one of them. Which, in our experience, is always the week you're trying to do something else.

Companies House has also said flatly that "it is unlawful for a director to act as a director without completing identity verification", and that it may issue penalties "at company or individual officer level". Its published approach to non-compliance is to inform first, nudge second, enforce third. Being at the third stage of that is a bad use of a Tuesday.

What AI automation for trades has to do with a Companies House deadline

Directly? Nothing, and nobody should try to sell you software for this one.

It's one person, one piece of photo ID, one free government login. GOV.UK One Login does it with a biometric passport, a UK photo driving licence or a biometric residence permit, and Companies House states the service "is free of charge". No eligible photo ID, and you can do it at the Post Office. Would rather not do it yourself, and an accountant or solicitor registered as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider can do it for you. That's the whole menu. We build websites, we're not your accountant, and this isn't legal or tax advice.

The part that is our trade is the shape of the problem rather than the problem. A deadline nobody can see is a deadline somebody misses, and the reason this one will catch people isn't laziness. It's that the date lives in a place nobody looks: a filing calendar one person half-remembers, an accountant's system you can't see into, and now, apparently, somebody's birthday.

Which is the same argument as The Boring Four, pointed the other way. The jobs worth automating are the dull, repeating, easily-forgotten ones. The jobs not worth automating are the ones you do once, properly, with a passport in your hand.

This week's homework: find your dates

Twenty minutes, and most of it is looking things up rather than doing anything.

One. Pull up your company on the public register. It's free and there's no login. The next statement date is on the company overview, and the PSC register is a tab on the same page.

Two. Write down everyone attached to the company: every director, and everyone on that PSC register. Against each name, work out which of the three rules they fall under. Director, PSC-only, or both.

Three. Anyone not yet verified, verify now rather than on their date. Nothing about this gets easier by being closer to the deadline, and the code doesn't expire while it waits.

Four. Put every date in the same shared calendar as everything else the company has to do, with a fortnight's warning on each. Not in one person's phone. The whole failure mode here is a date that only one person can see.

If any of it looks tangled — a dormant company you forgot you were still a director of, a PSC who's stopped answering the phone — that's an hour with your accountant now rather than a blocked filing in November.

Company filings aren't our trade and we won't pretend they are. The customer side is: enquiries, quotes and jobs landing somewhere dated and searchable rather than in a phone, a van and three notebooks. If that's the bit of your week that keeps going missing, here's how we work, and there's more for the trades here.

And hit reply, because we read all of them. Did you already know your confirmation statement date, or did you have to go and look? We have a strong suspicion about the answer.

Built by operators, for operators.

— Kane & George