- Companies House data gives you reliable public-record fields: company status, official name, company number, registered office, directors, and persons with significant control.
- It is useful for company identity matching, deduplication anchoring, and confirming legal-entity details before CRM import - not for contact data, email addresses, or commercial intelligence.
- Most B2B enrichment workflows need Companies House data as one input alongside additional sources for contact fields, phone numbers, company size, and technology stack.
- Use the Companies House checker for a quick lookup before import, then use broader enrichment for the fields the register does not cover.
When people talk about enriching UK company records, Companies House data usually comes up quickly.
That makes sense. Companies House is the official UK company register. It is public, structured, regularly updated, and covers every limited company, LLP, and similar legal entity registered in England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland. For revenue teams working with UK company data, it is a useful and legitimate source.
But it is also a narrow one. Understanding what it covers - and what it does not - tells you where to use it and where you need something else.
What Companies House data includes
The public Companies House register contains structured data for every registered UK company. The fields available include:
Company identity fields
- Official registered name
- Company number (permanent unique identifier)
- Company type (private limited company, LLP, PLC, and others)
- Company status (active, dissolved, liquidation, administration, and others)
- Incorporation date
Registered office The official address of the legal entity - not necessarily the trading address, but the address that legal correspondence goes to and the one used for geographic matching.
Officers (directors) Active and resigned directors, including appointment date, resignation date, and role. Depending on the company and disclosure settings, this may also include nationality and country of residence.
Persons with significant control (PSCs) The individuals or entities with meaningful ownership or control over the company, along with the nature of that control (ownership of shares, voting rights, or other significant influence).
Filing history Dates and types of filings made with Companies House, including accounts and confirmation statements.
The Companies House field reference
The same fields, read as an enrichment source: what each one is actually good for, how far you can trust it, and where it misleads if you use it for the wrong job.
| Field | Reliability as a CRM field | Best used for | Changes | Do not use it for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company number | Authoritative and permanent | The join key for every other company record you hold | Never for the life of the company | Nothing - this is the one field you should always store |
| Registered name | Authoritative | Deduplicating company records; resolving name variants | On formal name change | The name a rep should say on a call - it is often not the trading name |
| Company type | Authoritative | Deciding PECR subscriber treatment; segmenting by entity type | Rarely | Inferring company size |
| Company status | Authoritative | Suppressing dissolved entities before import or outreach | Any time, without warning | Judging financial health or whether they are trading |
| Incorporation date | Authoritative | Company age segmentation; sanity-checking a suspect record | Never | Estimating maturity or revenue on its own |
| Registered office | Authoritative for legal correspondence | Country and region assignment; matching entities | On formal change | Territory routing by where staff actually sit |
| Officers | Authoritative for appointments | Verifying a named director; finding decision-makers at small firms | On appointment or resignation | Assuming a director is the buyer, or is contactable |
| PSCs | Authoritative | Group structure and ownership questions | On ownership change | Identifying who to sell to |
| Filing history | Authoritative | Spotting dormancy signals and overdue filings | On each filing | A credit or risk score |
| SIC codes | Self-reported by the company | A rough first-pass industry classification | On confirmation statement | Your primary industry field - map it, do not trust it |
The pattern worth noticing: everything the register asserts about the legal entity is authoritative, and everything it implies about the business is inference. Register status, number, and type belong in your CRM as facts. Size, health, and industry do not.
Where Companies House data helps in B2B enrichment
Company identity matching
The most immediately useful application is verifying which legal entity a company record actually refers to. When you have a company name from an event form, a prospecting list, or a third-party source, you do not always know if “Acme UK” and “Acme UK Ltd” are the same entity or two different registrations.
Looking up the company number resolves that question. The company number does not change when a company changes its name or moves address, so it is a stable anchor for deduplication and matching.
Anchoring CRM account records
Once you have a company number stored against a CRM account, you can use it to match and de-duplicate across data sources with confidence. Without a company number, matching relies on name and domain - both of which are noisier than an identifier.
For UK-focused revenue teams, adding company number as a custom field in the CRM and populating it during import is a straightforward improvement that pays off in every deduplication and matching workflow you run later.
Pre-import company status checks
Before adding a company to your CRM or a live outbound workflow, checking whether it is active, dissolved, or in liquidation is a basic data quality step. Companies House is the authoritative source for that check.
A dissolved company in your pipeline is a signal that the record needs review. An active status does not guarantee the company is a good prospect, but a non-active status is a definite flag.
Registered office for geographic filtering
If your workflow involves territory-based routing or segmentation, the registered office gives you a reliable geographic reference for UK companies. It is not always the operational address, but it is the most consistently available address data for registered entities.
Director and PSC data for record disambiguation
When two company records look similar and you cannot tell from name and domain alone whether they refer to the same entity, director names and PSC details give you additional signals. Shared directors or PSCs across differently named companies may indicate related entities. Entirely different directors on companies with similar names suggest genuinely separate records.
Where Companies House data does not help
Contact-level data
The register does not include email addresses, phone numbers, job titles, or LinkedIn URLs for the people at a company. Directors are listed, but only their name, role, and appointment date are publicly available. If you need to reach the finance director, the head of operations, or the CEO at a specific company, Companies House tells you who holds those roles but not how to contact them.
Company size and revenue
Companies House does not include employee count, annual revenue, or headcount by department. Smaller private companies are not required to file detailed accounts, so even their financial data may be limited. For firmographic enrichment - company size bands, revenue estimates, industry codes beyond SIC - you need other data sources.
Technology stack and intent data
The register has no information about what software a company uses, what they are buying, or what signals they are showing in the market. That data comes from specialist providers, not public records.
Operational addresses and multiple sites
The registered office is a single address. Companies with multiple locations, regional offices, or a registered office that differs from where the team actually works will not have those additional addresses on the register.
Data on companies not registered in the UK
Companies House covers UK-registered entities only. If you are working with Irish, US, German, or other international companies, there is no data here. International company verification requires country-specific registers.
How to use Companies House data in a B2B enrichment workflow
A practical enrichment workflow for UK company records might look like this:
Identify the legal entity - use the Companies House checker to confirm company name, number, and status from the public register. Resolve any ambiguity in the record before it enters the CRM.
Anchor the record - store the company number in your CRM account. This becomes the stable identifier for all subsequent matching and enrichment.
Check company status - flag any records that are not active for review before they enter live workflows.
Enrich the gaps - once you have the legal entity confirmed, use a B2B data enrichment provider to fill the fields Companies House does not cover: contact emails, direct phone numbers, company size, seniority, and technology stack.
Validate enriched data - after enrichment, validate email addresses for deliverability and phone numbers for format before the record reaches an outbound tool.
This sequence works because Companies House data is reliable and free, so it makes sense to use it first to confirm identity before spending enrichment credits on a record that might turn out to be the wrong company or already dissolved.
For a broader overview of how B2B enrichment works and how to evaluate providers, see what is B2B data enrichment and the B2B data enrichment overview.
Practical limits to be aware of
Sole traders and partnerships are not on the register
The register covers limited companies and LLPs. Sole traders, general partnerships, and many smaller businesses are not registered at Companies House. If your target market includes these types of businesses, do not assume the absence of a Companies House record means a company does not exist.
Filing lag
There is often a delay between a real-world event - a director resignation, an address change - and when the updated filing appears on the register. This lag is usually measured in weeks or months for minor changes, but it means the register reflects a recent point in time, not necessarily the exact current state.
Voluntary and compulsory dissolution look similar
A dissolved company could have been wound up voluntarily in good order or struck off compulsorily for non-compliance. The status field alone does not tell you which - you need to look at the filing history for that distinction.
Summary
Companies House data is a reliable, free, and legitimate source for UK company identity. It is most valuable as an anchor at the start of a company enrichment workflow - confirming which legal entity you are dealing with before you invest in contact data or firmographic enrichment.
For fields beyond identity (contact data, company size, technology stack, intent), you need additional sources. The Companies House checker is the right tool for the identity and status check; broader B2B data enrichment covers the rest.
Because it anchors legal identity, this check earns a high place in your source hierarchy - when Companies House and a commercial provider disagree on a registered name or status, the register is the authority. Refreshing existing CRM records covers how to encode that precedence as a field-level policy so a refresh does not overwrite verified registry data with a vendor’s guess. On the way in rather than on refresh, entity confirmation belongs alongside the company-name work in the nine-check pre-import pass.
DataFixr combines Companies House lookups with cleaning, deduplication, validation, and broader enrichment workflows - so UK company data arrives in the CRM with the right legal-entity details confirmed before credits are spent on the wrong record. Start using DataFixr free ->