Company directors, people with significant control, and people in equivalent roles such as members of an LLP, general partners and the managing officers of overseas companies registered in the UK. It became a legal requirement on 18 November 2025 under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023.

In most cases you only need to do it once. The same personal code then covers every company you are involved with.

If you are already a director, you give your personal code as part of your company's next confirmation statement. If you are a person with significant control and not a director, your deadline is the first 14 days of your birth month. Someone who is both has a further 14 day window starting the day after the confirmation statement date.

If you are appointed as a new director, or newly added as a PSC, you need a personal code at that point.

Continuing to act as a director after your deadline without a verified identity is an offence. Companies House can prosecute or issue a financial penalty, you cannot be appointed to new directorships or register new companies, and a note can be published against your name on the public register.

It is an eleven character code that proves you are a verified person. It belongs to you rather than to any company, and you use the same one for every appointment.

Companies House sends it, not us. When we verify you as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider we tell Companies House, and they email the code to the address you gave us. Their guidance says you should have it within a few hours.

No. That is the point of coming to us. The alternative route is to verify yourself through GOV.UK One Login, which is free of charge and works well for many people, but it means setting up an account and proving your identity through an app, a set of security questions or a trip to the Post Office.

Verifying through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider skips all of that. You send us your documents here, we check them, and Companies House emails you the code. You never create an account with anyone.

Government Gateway, the old HMRC sign-in, is not used for this at all.

No. We verify identity for anybody who needs it, whether or not we do anything else for you, and there is no obligation to become a client afterwards.

It is a separate, chargeable service, priced on its own and not included in any accountancy or tax fee. The fee is £90 plus VAT per person verified, and we confirm it with you in writing before anything is charged.

£90 plus VAT per person verified. That is one flat fee for the whole check: the review of your documents, the photograph and video, the report we issue you, and filing the result with Companies House.

There is nothing further to pay to Companies House for the verification itself, and nothing to pay if we cannot complete the check because your documents do not meet the standard.

Filling in this page takes about five minutes. A person here then checks what you sent by hand, usually within one to two working days, and submits the verification to Companies House. Companies House emails your personal code after that.

Two documents. The first must be photographic: a passport, a photocard driving licence, a national identity card, a biometric residence permit or a visa. The second can be another photographic document, or something showing your name and address such as a bank statement, utility bill, council tax bill or tenancy agreement from the last three months.

You will also take a photograph of your face and a short video, on camera, so that we can see the person and the document together.

Yes. The whole thing is done online from wherever you are. If you are outside the UK, at least one of your two documents must be issued by a government.

TaxDigit produces a full identity verification report: your details, every document you sent, the live photograph and video, the technical checks, your face and the photograph on your document enlarged side by side, and the reviewer's decision. We hold that record for the seven years Companies House requires.

Your personal code comes separately, by email, from Companies House.

They travel over an encrypted connection straight into our own secure inbox and are deleted from this web server the moment they arrive. Only our team sees them. We are the data controller for the check, we do not share them with anyone else, and we keep the record for seven years because Companies House requires an Authorised Corporate Service Provider to be able to evidence why it was satisfied.

We come back to you at the email address you gave, quoting your reference, and ask for whatever we need. Nothing is submitted to Companies House until the check is sound.

Yes. TaxDigit is registered with Companies House as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, ACSP AP019483, which is the status that permits a firm to verify identity under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. We are chartered certified accountants based in Guildford, Surrey.