The Companies House “confirmation statement” is largely just a summary of key, semi permanent details of the company. Predominantly, it states where the registered office address is located and who the shareholders/directors are. The key things to note are as follows:
Persons of significant control (PSC)
Oversimplifying a little, a PSC is anyone with >25% share ownership in your company.
The first thing to note is that shareholders aren’t always humans. We mention this as it’s largely why this section looks complicated. Shareholders can be either a human being, a corporate body (e.g. limited company) or what’s known as a “legal person”.
For your typical micro business, the first option will be the correct one, namely “a person with significant control”.
Adding a PSC
When adding a PSC, there are quite a few basic details requested. There is an option to protect the identity of PSCs from the public record. However, the reality is that the vast majority of business owners won’t be able to do this.
It then asks for your date of birth. As with details for directors, only the month and year will be publicly visible (to go some way towards making life harder for potential ID fraudsters). It then also requests your nationality.
Correspondence address – this will be publicly available. If you’re concerned about data privacy, you may want to make this somewhere other than your home address (eg your accountant’s address). Having said that, the majority of small limited company owners will use their home address for this.
Home address – your actual home address is separately requested. This won’t be publicly available. Your country of residence will be publicly available.
Identity verification code – as part of adding any new PSC or director, you will need to add their unique Companies House verification code. If you don’t have a code yet, please see this guide for how to verify your identity and obtain one.
Nature of control
This is where it can look more complicated than it really is.
Ownership of shares –> The person holds shares, then choose relevant %. Note that if the person owns exactly 25%, 50%, or 75%, then they fit into the lower category (i.e. 50% exactly is “more than 25% but not more than 50% of shares”, rather than “more than 50% but not more than 75% of shares”).
Ownership of voting rights –> The person holds voting rights. Unless you’ve got a fancy share structure where only some shares hold voting rights (we wouldn’t recommend this for a simple micro company) then this will exactly mirror the shares.
Right to appoint or remove the majority of the board of directors. As suggested earlier, assuming it’s a human shareholder, then the second and third options aren’t relevant – it’s just whether the first is true or not. In practice, anyone controlling the company (i.e. >50% shares) can appoint or remove directors. For micro companies, the directors and shareholders are likely to be the same people (or spouses/similar), so this is more a technicality to put on the form rather than something you need to be concerned about.
Has significant influence or control if any of the above boxes have been ticked, this should be left blank. This option is only relevant if none of the above more specific reasons apply.
When did this person become a PSC?
This would tend to be the date of incorporation, or if it’s someone who only received shares later than that date, the date they went over 25% share ownership.
Rest of form
Check the registered office address is still valid and the shareholders match as expected, but otherwise it’s typically just a case of clicking confirm/next half a dozen times and then paying a £50 fee to Companies House.
Unpaid share capital . This is something that confuses a few people. Just enter £0 here, on the basis you will have paid for your share (if not physically putting the £1 or £100 in, it will likely have been dealt with via director loan account).
Deadline
You have 14 days to file the confirmation statement, although there is no financial penalty for late filing. However if left too long, Companies House will start threatening striking off action, so always best to get this out of the way in good time.
If you have any questions on this form, or incorporating your business, get in touch and ask.
