Quick summary
A PSC, in Companies House speak, short for a person with significant control, is generally anyone who owns more than 25% of a company's shares, and many self-managed blocks correctly have none at all. PSCs also face their own identity verification deadline: existing PSCs who are also directors have 14 days from the company's confirmation statement date to confirm their identity, and non-director PSCs have 14 days from the first day of their birth month.
First, a correction to something most guidance still says. Companies no longer have to keep their own PSC register. That duty ended on 18 November 2025, when the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act abolished the local registers of people with significant control, directors and secretaries and made the Companies House record the official one (here's what changed). What has not gone away is the duty to work out who your PSCs are and keep Companies House told. That's the part that matters, and it's where a lot of self-managed blocks get quietly confused, since "significant control" doesn't map neatly onto how anyone actually thinks about owning a flat.
Who counts
Broadly, someone's a PSC if they:
- Own more than 25% of the shares, directly or indirectly
- Hold more than 25% of the voting rights
- Can appoint or remove a majority of the board
- Otherwise have significant influence over the company
In a typical Resident Management Company, where each flat holds one share or something close to it, nobody usually clears the 25% line alone, so there is no PSC filing (a PSC01 or PSC04, in Companies House speak) to make at all, which is why many correctly report no PSCs at all. A block of three or four flats, or one person owning two of them, can produce a genuine PSC quite easily.
Where the confusion creeps in
Companies House's data reflects what's been filed, sometimes lagging well behind reality. A company set up without every shareholding recorded properly, or a transfer completed without anyone reassessing who now counts as a PSC, can leave the register stale without anyone noticing. Worth checking at every confirmation statement rather than assuming it looks after itself, it's one of the items on our confirmation statement checklist.
The identity verification deadline PSCs now face
Being a PSC carries its own identity verification duty, separate from whether that person is also a director. A new individual PSC needs to supply their Companies House personal code within 14 days of being notified. An existing PSC who's also a director gets 14 days from the company's confirmation statement date. An existing PSC who isn't a director gets 14 days from the first day of their birth month. Easy to miss if nobody's actually tracking birthdays against a spreadsheet of shareholders.
Keeping it accurate
- Recalculate whenever shares change hands, not just at incorporation. One sale can create a PSC out of nowhere.
- Tell Companies House promptly, whether someone's newly become a PSC, their details have changed, or they've stopped being one.
- Revisit "no PSCs" every year, as part of the confirmation statement review, rather than treating it as settled forever.
- Track each PSC's verification deadline separately, since it doesn't line up neatly with the confirmation statement date for everyone.
How this ties into share transfers
Because PSC status runs on percentages, every share transfer can shift it, a leaseholder selling, or one person buying a second flat's share. See our piece on share transfers and the 25% threshold for how that plays out.
The local PSC register went, but the register of members did not, and it is the one nobody else keeps for you: the one register you still have to keep.
Frequently asked questions
Does every Resident Management Company have a PSC?
No, plenty of larger blocks, with shares spread thinly across many flats, genuinely have none. Worth confirming this every year rather than assuming it's still true, something FreeholdMate checks automatically against your live share register.
What happens if I don't update it after a transfer?
Your PSC data at Companies House goes out of date, a compliance issue in its own right regardless of how the transfer itself was recorded elsewhere. Software like FreeholdMate flags a threshold crossing at the point of recording the transfer, not months later.
Is a PSC the same as a director?
No, ownership and control versus who actually runs things day to day. Often the same person in a small building's company, but two distinct legal roles with two distinct registers, and now two distinct identity verification deadlines to track.