You may have missed this, most business owners have other things on their mind, but it is worth a few minutes. On 16 September 2026, three company directors were convicted at City of London Magistrates' Court, the first prosecutions of their kind. The core issue was straightforward: they had continued to act as directors without verifying their identity with Companies House, and their companies had also missed confirmation statement deadlines. The fines themselves were modest, a few hundred pounds each once costs and surcharges were added. The conviction is not.

I do not raise this to alarm anyone. Most directors who sort this out properly will never come near a courtroom. I raise it because it is the clearest sign yet that a rule which felt like background noise a year ago now has real consequences attached, and because "I did not know I had to" stopped being much of a defence the moment enforcement started.

What actually changed, back in November 2025

Since 18 November 2025, part of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, verifying your identity has been a legal requirement for anyone acting as a company director or a person with significant control, PSC for short. LLP members are covered too, and corporate directors and corporate PSCs are due to be brought in later.

New directors and PSCs appointed from that date must verify before they can act, there is no grace period there. Existing directors and PSCs were given a transition window: directors verify by their company's next confirmation statement after 18 November 2025, and PSCs verify by the anniversary of their own birth month, with Companies House able to grant a short extension in genuine cases. Depending on when your company's confirmation statement falls, that window may already have passed, or it may still be some months off.

There are two ways to actually do it. You can verify directly yourself, free, through GOV.UK One Login with a passport or other accepted document. Or it can be done through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, an accountant or solicitor supervised for anti-money laundering purposes, as part of managing your company's filings. Both routes meet exactly the same standard, it is a question of whether you would rather handle it yourself or have it taken off your plate.

What happens if you do not

Companies House has been clear that this rolls out in stages, and enforcement so far has leaned toward education rather than punishment. But the stages are real, and this month's prosecutions show the later ones are no longer theoretical.

  • You cannot file. An unverified director cannot file a confirmation statement or most other statutory documents on the company's behalf.
  • You cannot incorporate. A new company cannot be set up with an unverified director or PSC attached.
  • The company itself gets marked non-compliant, and persistent failure to file a confirmation statement remains, as it always has, a route toward being struck off the register.
  • Financial penalties follow where non-compliance persists after Companies House has already made contact.
  • Prosecution is reserved for the more serious cases, deliberate evasion or a pattern of repeated non-compliance, but this month's case is proof that reservation is not the same as never.

None of that needs to touch you. It only becomes a live risk if verification quietly sits on a list of things to get round to, past the point where your confirmation statement is actually due.

What to actually do about it

This is squarely an Accountability question, one of the five pillars this practice runs on. Owned ahead of time, not chased at the deadline.

  • Check, do not assume. If your company has more than one director, or a PSC who is not also a director, do not assume someone else has already sorted it. Verification is individual, one person completing it does not cover anyone else on the same company.
  • Do it before your confirmation statement is due, not on the day it is due. Companies House cannot accept the filing from an unverified director, so leaving it late risks missing the statement itself, which carries its own consequences separate from verification.
  • Pick whichever route actually suits you. GOV.UK One Login is free and takes most people a matter of minutes with a passport to hand. If you would rather it was simply dealt with alongside your other filings, this is exactly the kind of thing Companies House and HMRC compliance already covers, as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider I can complete it for you directly.
A five-minute task left for a year is still a five-minute task. It is just one that now shows up next to a confirmation statement deadline instead of on its own.

If you are not sure whether you, a co-director, or your company's PSC have verified yet, that is a quick thing to check properly rather than guess. Book a free discovery call and we will run through exactly where your company stands.