PSC Register Changes: What UK Directors Need to Know About Identity Verification
If you're a director or a person with significant control (PSC) of a UK company, there's a change worth knowing about even if nobody's told you yet: Companies House now maintains the PSC register itself, and it comes with a new identity verification requirement that has real deadlines attached.
This isn't a minor administrative tweak. If you miss the window, you're looking at a company in breach of its filing obligations — and potentially you personally, if you're the PSC in question.
What actually changed
Previously, every company kept its own PSC register — a document listing anyone with significant control over the business (broadly, anyone holding more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercises significant influence). You maintained it yourself and made it available on request.
As of 18 November 2025, that local register requirement has gone. Companies House now maintains the PSC register centrally. Your company still needs to tell Companies House who its PSCs are and keep that information current, but you're no longer required to hold a separate local copy.
Alongside this, identity verification is now mandatory for PSCs, not just directors.
The identity verification deadlines
This is the part most likely to catch people out, because the deadline depends on your role:
If you're a PSC who is also a director: your 14-day verification window starts the day after your company's confirmation statement date. So if your confirmation statement date is 31 March, you have from 1 April to 14 April to complete verification.
If you're a PSC but not a director: your window is the first 14 days of your birth month, every year, for as long as you remain a PSC.
New PSCs: verification is required within 14 days of appointment, regardless of the above.
Verification can be completed directly with Companies House, or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP) — typically your accountant or company formation agent, if they're registered for this.
What you need to report, and how fast
Once verified, your company must file confirmed PSC details — name, date of birth, nationality, address, and the nature of their control — within 14 days of confirmation. Any change to those details, or to who counts as a PSC at all (someone newly crossing the 25% threshold, or someone stepping back below it), also needs reporting to Companies House within 14 days.
Fourteen days sounds generous until you're relying on someone else — a fellow shareholder, a co-director — to notice a change and tell you about it promptly. This is where a lot of small companies slip: the change happens, nobody flags it internally, and the clock has already run out by the time it surfaces at the next confirmation statement.
What stays public, and what doesn't
Most PSC information is publicly searchable on the Companies House register — that hasn't changed. What's protected is residential addresses and full dates of birth, which remain hidden from public view even though they're held on file.
If you're a PSC and privacy is a concern, it's worth knowing that the protection applies automatically to those two fields — you don't need to apply separately to have them suppressed, unlike some other sensitive information requests to Companies House.
A practical checklist for directors
Check who your PSCs actually are, today. Shareholdings and control arrangements shift more often than people remember to log. If nobody's reviewed this since the company was set up, it's worth doing now rather than at the next confirmation statement deadline.
Confirm each PSC's verification status. If someone hasn't completed identity verification yet, work out which deadline applies to them and get it done before it becomes urgent.
Build the 14-day window into your calendar, not your memory. Whether it's a confirmation statement date or a PSC's birth month, these are recurring, predictable deadlines — the kind that are easy to automate a reminder for and easy to forget without one.
Keep a clear internal record of the nature of control for each PSC. Companies House needs specifics (shareholding percentage, voting rights, or other influence), not a vague description.
Why this matters beyond compliance for its own sake
None of this is optional box-ticking dressed up as bureaucracy — the PSC register exists to make company ownership transparent, and Companies House has been given real enforcement teeth to back it up. A company with lapsed or inaccurate PSC information is a company that looks, to a lender, investor, or due diligence team, like one that doesn't have its governance in order. That perception costs more than the ten minutes it takes to keep the register current.
Keeping this off your worry list
This is exactly the kind of statutory admin FoundersLedger was built to keep visible rather than buried in a drawer — your officer, shareholder, and PSC records live alongside your actual books, not in a separate compliance folder you only open once a year. If you're not confident your PSC details are current, that's worth ten minutes today rather than a scramble at your next confirmation statement.