If you run your freelance work through a limited company, you have six days to finish a job that around a third of PSC appointments still have not done. The 12-month transition for Companies House identity verification ends on 17 November 2026, and the latest official figures show 34% of individual PSC appointments were still unverified at the end of September. The fix is free, takes minutes, and starts with a GOV.UK One Login account.

If you trade as a sole trader, stop here. None of this applies to you. The rules only bite if your name sits on a company register as a director or a person with significant control (PSC), or as a member of a limited liability partnership (LLP).

The catch is that 17 November is the end of the transition, not everyone’s personal deadline. For most directors, the real deadline was the date of their company’s next confirmation statement, and for many that date has already passed. We checked the GOV.UK guidance, the latest Companies House figures and the first court cases on 11 November 2026 while writing this article. Here is who must act, what happens if you do not, and the exact steps to close it this week.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice. If your company structure is unusual, or you have already missed a filing date, get proper professional advice.

Who has to verify, and who does not

Identity verification became a legal requirement on 18 November 2025 under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. It applies to people, not companies, and it applies regardless of nationality or where you live. You must verify if you are:

  • a director of a UK company, including the sole director of a one-person company;
  • a member of an LLP;
  • a PSC, which usually means anyone holding more than 25% of the shares or voting rights, or with the right to appoint or remove a majority of the directors.

A one-person freelance company normally creates two roles for the same person: you are the director, and you are also the PSC because you own the shares. That double role is where most freelancers trip up, and we come back to it below.

Three groups are not in scope yet. Corporate directors, officers of corporate PSCs, and people who only file documents at Companies House will be brought in at a later date. For people who only file, Companies House says verification will start no earlier than November 2027, with at least six months’ notice. New directors appointed since 18 November 2025 already had to verify before acting as a director, so if you set up your company in the last year, you did this at incorporation.

If you are weighing up whether to trade as a sole trader or through a limited company, our guide to becoming a freelancer in the UK sets out the choice. This article is for those who already have a company.

What the latest figures say

Companies House published its latest identity verification figures on 29 October 2026, covering the position at 30 September 2026. The headline number is 10,705,965 verified appointments, or 72.8% of the director, LLP member and PSC roles covered by the checks. By role:

RoleVerified appointmentsShare verified
Directors6,590,95978.03%
LLP members119,17272.97%
Individual PSCs3,995,83465.56%

Read the other way, around 22% of director appointments and around 34% of individual PSC appointments were still unverified around seven weeks before the transition ends. AccountingWEB, reporting the same figures on 9 November 2026, put it plainly: more than one in three PSC appointments remain unverified.

Two cautions about the numbers. First, they count appointments, not people. One person can hold several appointments across different companies, so the count of verified appointments is not the count of verified individuals. Second, Companies House describes the figures as unaudited management information taken from its administrative systems, and they may change.

The direction of travel is fast. At the end of June 2026 only 55% of director appointments and 42% of PSC appointments had been verified, and 49.68% of all appointments covered. Three months later the total had risen to 72.8%. Companies House originally estimated that 6 to 7 million people would need to verify by mid-November 2026. The remaining quarter is now up against a deadline measured in days, and the people most likely to be in it are the ones who have not been following the story at all: the sole director of a small company who assumed their accountant handled it, or the PSC who never realised they held a second role.

The date problem: 17 or 18 November?

Here is an honest complication, and it is worth stating plainly because several guides on the internet state the date with more confidence than the sources allow.

The transition is set by regulation 4 of SI 2025/1118 as the 12 months beginning with 18 November 2025. That makes the last day 17 November 2026. Law firm Brodies, writing about the first prosecutions on 2 November 2026, says the transitional year “ends on 17th November 2026”. Other advisers count 12 months from 18 November 2025 and give 18 November. The GOV.UK guidance pages describe a 12-month transition but name no final day: we checked the guidance page “When you need to verify your identity for Companies House” on 11 November 2026, and it gives deadlines by role, not a single calendar date.

The practical answer is simple. Treat 17 November as your last day, and do not spend the argument on the 18th. More important, 17 November is the end of the transition, not your personal deadline. Your personal deadline was the date of your company’s next confirmation statement inside that 12-month window, and for most companies that date has already fallen. If your confirmation statement was due in, say, March 2026, your deadline was March 2026, and you are already late.

One small caveat for companies whose statement date falls right at the end. A company must file its confirmation statement within 14 days after the end of its review period, under section 853A(1) of the Companies Act 2006. So a company whose review period ends on 17 November 2026 can file, with every director verified, up to 1 December 2026. That is a filing window for the statement. It is not extra time to get verified.

The trap most one-person companies miss

Verifying once is not the same as finishing the job. Verification is personal: you prove who you are once, and Companies House gives you a single 11-character personal code. But you must then link that code to every role you hold, and each role has its own filing.

As a director, you give your personal code in the company’s confirmation statement. The company cannot file that statement until every director has verified, so one unverified director blocks the whole filing.

As a PSC, you give your code separately, through the “Provide identity verification details for a PSC” service. The window depends on your situation:

  • If you are both a director and a PSC of the same company, your 14-day PSC window starts the day after the company’s confirmation statement date. Filing the confirmation statement early does not move it.
  • If you are a PSC but not a director of the same company, your window is the first 14 days of your birth month. Someone born on 22 January has a window starting on 1 January.
  • If you became a PSC after 18 November 2025, you can give your code when you are first added to the register, or within 14 days of being added.

For a sole director who is also the majority shareholder, that means two filings, not one. Verifying your identity and giving the code in the confirmation statement closes the director role. It does not close the PSC role. The PSC filing still needs doing inside its own 14-day window, and the window is easy to miss because nothing prompts you after the confirmation statement goes in.

The last PSC window of the transition is running right now. A PSC who is not a director and was born in November has a window of 1 to 14 November 2026. If that is your spouse, your business partner, or a family member who holds shares but sits nowhere on the board, their window closes this week.

What happens if you miss it

The consequences are structural before they are financial. A company cannot file its confirmation statement until every director has verified. That stalls routine filings, and a confirmation statement that cannot be filed becomes a late confirmation statement, which carries its own problems.

Beyond the filing block, once your company’s confirmation-statement trigger has passed, acting as a director while unverified is a criminal offence under section 167M of the Companies Act 2006. GOV.UK puts it in plain terms: if you do not comply with all requirements on time, you may be committing an offence, and may face prosecution and a fine through the courts, or a financial penalty.

This is no longer theoretical. On 16 September 2026 the Insolvency Service secured the first convictions for identity verification offences at City of London Magistrates’ Court. Three directors of two small companies were fined:

  • Jill White, a director of White (Reading Properties) Limited, was fined £166, plus £85 in costs and a £66 victim surcharge. She had continued to act as a director without verifying, and only completed verification in early September 2026, around nine months after her deadline and shortly before appearing in court.
  • Marc Dillon, a director of the same company, was fined £307, plus £85 in costs and a £123 victim surcharge. He had verified his own identity. His offence was failing to take reasonable steps to stop his unverified co-director from continuing to act.
  • Modinat Banjo, a director of J Isogony Apparel Limited, was fined £80, plus £85 in costs and a £32 victim surcharge. She had continued acting as a director while unverified, including signing and delivering company accounts, and completed verification only on or around 28 May 2026.

All three cases also involved late confirmation statements. The fines themselves were small, from £80 to £307. The point is not the size of the fine. It is that each person now has a criminal conviction for something that takes minutes to fix, and that the Dillon case shows responsibility runs both ways: a director who has verified can still be convicted for letting an unverified co-director carry on.

The fix, step by step

Here is the whole job, in order.

1. Check your dates on the register. Look your company up on the Companies House register and find its next confirmation statement date. You can also see the due date for each of your roles there, so check yours rather than working it out from memory. If you are a PSC who is not a director, check the birth-month window shown on the register.

2. Verify your identity, free, through GOV.UK One Login. Use the “Verify your identity for Companies House” service on GOV.UK. Walkthrough guides put the online check at 5 to 20 minutes if your ID is to hand. You need a biometric passport from any country, a UK photocard driving licence, or a UK biometric residence permit, and the name, date of birth and address on your ID must match the Companies House register exactly. If the details do not match, fix the register entry first, or the check will fail. If you cannot use the online route, an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, usually your accountant, can verify you, normally for a fee. Do not post or email your documents to Companies House.

3. Find your personal code. Once verified, you get an 11-character Companies House personal code. It belongs to you, not to any company, and it works for every directorship you hold now or in future. You can find it in your Companies House account, under Manage Account, then View Personal Code.

4. Give the code as a director. Your code goes in the company’s next confirmation statement. If the statement is already due, file it now that every director has verified.

5. Give the code as a PSC, separately. Use the PSC service inside your 14-day window. If you are both director and PSC of the same company, remember the window starts the day after the confirmation statement date. If you are a PSC who is not a director, the window is the first 14 days of your birth month.

6. If your window has already passed, verify now anyway. Late verification beats no verification. The first three convictions involved people who were months late, not days: White only verified in early September, shortly before appearing in court, and Banjo had verified in late May and was still convicted. Verify, file what is outstanding, and if the company has missed a confirmation statement, speak to your accountant about bringing the filings up to date.

Your checklist for this week

  1. Today: look your company up on the Companies House register and note the confirmation statement date and the due date for each of your roles.
  2. If you are a November-born PSC who is not a director, your window is 1 to 14 November. Do it now, not on Friday.
  3. Verify through GOV.UK One Login if you can. It is free, and it is the fastest route.
  4. Link your personal code to every role you hold: director through the confirmation statement, PSC through the separate service.
  5. While you are in admin mode, note the other date in the diary: the Self Assessment deadline is 31 January 2027, a Sunday, and our freelancer tax return checklist covers the dates, the expenses people most often miss, and the payment on account trap.

The transition ends on 17 November. For most directors the real deadline already passed with their confirmation statement. The work itself is small. Do it before the week runs out: it stops the position getting worse, unblocks the filing, and sharply reduces the risk of prosecution or a fine. It cannot undo anything already done while unverified.

Quick answers

Does Companies House identity verification apply to sole traders?

No. It applies to directors and people with significant control (PSCs) of UK companies, and to members of limited liability partnerships. If you trade as a sole trader, you have no company on the register and nothing to verify. The rules only bite once your name sits on a company register.

Is 17 November really the last day?

Treat it as the last day. The transition is the 12 months beginning 18 November 2025, which the statutory instrument (SI 2025/1118, regulation 4) puts as ending on 17 November 2026, and several law firms agree. Some advisers say 18 November, and the GOV.UK guidance pages do not name a final day at all. Either way, your personal deadline was probably earlier: for most directors it was the date of the company’s next confirmation statement.

I verified as a director. Do I need to do anything as a PSC?

Yes, if you are also a PSC of the same company. Verifying once gives you a single 11-character personal code, but you must link it to each role separately. The director code goes in the confirmation statement. The PSC code goes through a separate service, within 14 days starting the day after the confirmation statement date. A sole director who is also the majority shareholder holds two roles, so this is two filings, not one.

What happens if I miss the deadline?

Your company cannot file its confirmation statement until every director has verified, so routine filings stall. Acting as a director while unverified is an offence under section 167M of the Companies Act 2006, once your company’s confirmation-statement trigger has passed, and GOV.UK warns of prosecution and a fine through the courts, or a financial penalty. The first prosecutions already happened: on 16 September 2026 three directors were fined £80 to £307, plus costs and a victim surcharge, at City of London Magistrates’ Court.

How long does verification take, and what ID do I need?

The free route is the “Verify your identity for Companies House” service through GOV.UK One Login. Walkthrough guides put the online check at 5 to 20 minutes if your ID is to hand. You need a biometric passport, a UK photocard driving licence or a UK biometric residence permit, and the name, date of birth and address on your ID must match the Companies House register exactly. If you cannot use the online route, an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, usually your accountant, can verify you, normally for a fee.

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