When do you actually have to verify your identity with Companies House?

Short answer: for most existing directors, your deadline is your company's next confirmation statement date — not November 2026. For existing PSCs who are not directors, it is the first 14 days of your birth month. The widely quoted November date is the end of a transition period, not a personal deadline, and for the large majority of people it arrives far too late to be useful.

Why "18 November" confuses everybody

Companies House brought identity verification into force on 18 November 2025. Its own guidance is unusually direct about what that date means:

"From 18 November 2025, identity verification becomes a legal requirement. This date is not a deadline. It marks the start of a 12-month transition period."

So 18 November 2026 is when the transition period closes — the outer edge of the runway, by which point the existing population of directors and PSCs should have been swept up. It is not the date you personally must act by. Your date is set by your own company's filing cycle or, for some PSCs, by your birthday.

Treating November as your deadline is the single most common and most expensive misunderstanding on this subject.

Existing directors: your confirmation statement date

If you are already a director, you provide your personal code as part of your company's next confirmation statement. That means you must have verified before that statement is filed.

You are a director of more than one company? The requirement applies at each company — though you verify once and reuse the same personal code.

Worked examples:

Notice the middle row. A January statement date means your obligation genuinely does fall after 18 November 2026. Notice the first and third rows too — for a great many companies the real date is sooner than November, which is the point everyone misses.

How to find your confirmation statement date

Search your company on the Companies House register, open the Filing history tab, and find the most recent confirmation statement. Your next one is due within 14 days of the anniversary of that review period ending. If you have never filed one, it runs from incorporation.

New directors and new companies

If you are incorporating a company or being appointed to an existing one, you provide your personal code as part of the registration or appointment filing. In other words, verification comes first — you cannot be validly appointed without it.

PSCs: a completely different clock

This catches people out badly, because it has nothing to do with the company's filing dates.

• Existing PSC who is not a director: you must provide your code within the first 14 days of your birth month. Born in March? Your window is 1–14 March.
• Existing PSC who is also a director: you have obligations in both capacities. As a director, through the confirmation statement. As a PSC, within a 14-day period starting the day after the company's confirmation statement date.
• New PSC added after 18 November 2025: when you are first added to the register, or within 14 days of being added.

Overseas companies

If you have a UK establishment of an overseas company, you must confirm all directors have verified by the anniversary of your UK establishment's registration.

Groups not yet in scope

Companies House has said identity verification will be introduced at a later date for LLP members, corporate directors and corporate PSCs. If that is you, the requirement is coming but the timetable has not been set. Do not assume you are exempt permanently.

What to do if your date has already passed

Verify now, and file. Companies House has published a graduated enforcement approach: inform, nudge and guide, then act. Voluntary compliance before enforcement contact is materially better than being chased. See our guide on what happens if you don't verify.

The practical rule

Look up your confirmation statement date this week. Work back a month. That is your real deadline, and for most companies it is nowhere near November.