The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act at Companies House – what are the changes?

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act at Companies House – what are the changes?

Company name abuse

Previously – Companies House had limited powers to combat misleading company names being registered. 

Now – Companies House can reject names at incorporation, request changes and annotate or remove records. 

Companies House investigated a number of cloned restaurant companies in 2024, targeting 786 incorporations flagging suspicious applications and removed 965 companies and 2,895 fraudulent appointments. 

False information

Previously – Incorrect or incomplete entries could remain on the register for long periods, with challenges often needing external complaints or lengthy legal processes.

Now – Companies House proactively removes false entries, verifies identities and applies sanctions. The focus has shifted to ongoing verification. 

Between 4 March 2024 and 3 March 2025, Companies House queried and removed false or misleading information affecting over 100,000 companies and rejected over 10,200 suspicious applications. 

Identity and addresses

Previously – Use of PO boxes or non-traceable addresses was common and PSCs and directors could avoid identity confirmation.

Now – Companies must provide appropriate office addresses, and the identities of directors and PSCs can now be subject to verification requirements, with stronger checks on the legitimacy of submitted information. 

Since March 2024, false entries have been removed across 82,600 registered office addresses, 66,900 officer addresses and 55,100 PSC addresses. 

What happens next…..

Since the act received royal assent in October 2023, Companies House have made great progress and have moved from being a passive collector of information to an active guardian of corporate transparency.  

Many of the provisions under the act are still being rolled out, they are continuing to strengthen the integrity of their identity verification systems and are expanding their workforce to make sure they can carry out timely and effective action at proportionate scale.