Confirmation Statement Filing in Rayleigh — Keep Your Companies House Record Accurate

A confirmation statement is a filing made to Companies House that confirms the information held on the public register about your company is accurate and up to date. It is not a set of accounts and it contains no profit, turnover or tax figures. Instead, it asks you to review details such as your registered office address, directors, shareholders, people with significant control, share capital and SIC codes, update anything that has changed, and then confirm the record is correct. If nothing has changed, you still confirm that the information stands as it is.

Almost every company registered at Companies House needs to file a confirmation statement, including companies based in Rayleigh and across the UK. That covers active trading companies, dormant companies, non-trading companies and companies limited by guarantee where a confirmation statement is due. The requirement is tied to your company being on the register, not to how busy or profitable it has been. If you are unsure whether your particular entity needs to file, it is worth checking your company's filing history at Companies House or asking an accountant to confirm your position.

UK companies generally need to file a confirmation statement at least once every 12 months, even if the company is dormant or not trading. This runs from the end of your last review period rather than from your accounting period, so it does not follow the same cycle as your annual accounts. You can also file more than one confirmation statement within a review period if your information changes and you want the register updated sooner rather than waiting for the next one to fall due. Certain changes — such as a change of registered office, the appointment or resignation of a director, or an update to PSC information — may need to be reported separately to Companies House rather than being left until the confirmation statement.

Before filing, it is worth working through the register methodically. Check the registered office address and any SAIL address, the list of directors and their service addresses, company secretary details where applicable, shareholder information and share capital (including any transfers during the period), people with significant control and the nature of their control, and your SIC codes describing the company's business activity. It is also a sensible moment to check that your company name and any trading names shown are still what you expect. If anything has changed, it should be updated so the confirmation statement confirms a genuinely accurate picture.

In most cases, yes. Being dormant or not trading does not normally remove the obligation to file a confirmation statement, because the confirmation statement is about the accuracy of your registered information rather than about financial activity. A dormant company may have fewer changes to report — often the filing is a straightforward confirmation that nothing has moved — but it still needs to be made. Dormant status also has its own conditions and reporting implications, so it is worth speaking to an accountant if you are unsure how dormancy applies to your company.

They are two completely separate filings with different purposes. Annual accounts are the financial statements for your company's accounting period — they show what the company owns, owes, earned and spent, and they follow your accounting reference date. A confirmation statement is a non-financial check of the information Companies House holds, and it follows your confirmation statement review period instead. Filing one does not satisfy the other: a company can be fully up to date with its confirmation statement and still owe accounts, and vice versa. Both need to be dealt with on their own timetables.

A confirmation statement is filed with Companies House, while a Corporation Tax Return (CT600) is filed with HMRC. The confirmation statement confirms that the register information about your company is correct; the CT600 reports the company's taxable profits and calculates the corporation tax due. One is a company law filing and the other is a tax filing, and neither replaces the other. The same applies to VAT Returns, which are a separate HMRC obligation for VAT-registered businesses. Keeping all of these distinct helps you avoid assuming that one filing has covered another.

Failing to file a confirmation statement is a criminal offence in relation to the company and its directors, and Companies House can take action, which may include starting the process to strike the company off the register. Leaving it unresolved can also cause problems later — for example when opening a bank account, applying for finance or selling the business, because the register is the public record of your company. Professional Confirmation Statement Filing takes the uncertainty out of it: we check the details on the register against what you tell us, prepare and submit the confirmation statement, flag any separate updates that need to be made, and keep you informed at each stage. If you would like your filing handled from start to finish, get in touch with us and we can confirm what is due for your company.