Quick summary
Looking across thousands of genuinely self-managed freehold and Right to Manage companies registered across 173 London postcode districts, two factors stood out as the clearest predictors of strike-off: how many directors are on the board, and whether anyone is named as company secretary. Companies under active strike-off notice average just 1.82 directors against 2.99–3.13 everywhere else, and companies with a named secretary have a strike-off rate roughly six times lower than those without one.
Strike-off is the outcome nobody on a self-managed board expects to hit them, right up until a Gazette notice says otherwise. We went looking for patterns in the public data to see what, if anything, actually separates the companies that end up there from the ones that don't. Two things stood out clearly.
What we looked at
Companies House's public register lists every UK company, including every self-managed freehold and Right to Manage company, along with its directors, secretary, and current filing status. Filtering out agent-run shell companies to focus on genuinely leaseholder-run boards, and comparing companies currently under strike-off notice against those that aren't, two differences came through clearly, well beyond what you'd expect from noise alone.
Finding one: smaller boards fail more
Companies under active strike-off notice average 1.82 directors. Companies that aren't, whether their compliance is current, coming up for renewal, or overdue but not yet facing strike-off, average between 2.99 and 3.13 directors. More than a third of struck-off companies have just one or two people on the board. Read the full breakdown in our piece on what a small board means for strike-off risk.
Finding two: a named secretary changes the odds substantially
Companies with a named company secretary have a strike-off rate roughly six times lower than companies without one, and a combined overdue-plus-strike-off rate about a third lower. This holds even though, as we found separately, nine in ten named secretaries are simply residents of the building rather than outsourced agents, so the effect isn't really about professional support, it's about someone being clearly, individually responsible. More in our piece on why a named secretary matters more than it seems.
What this suggests, and what it doesn't
Neither factor guarantees an outcome on its own. Some small boards stay fully compliant for years, and a handful of companies with a named secretary are still under strike-off notice. What the pattern does suggest is that strike-off risk concentrates specifically around a lack of redundancy: too few people responsible, or nobody clearly responsible at all, rather than around building size, structure type, or how long a company's been registered, which showed far less difference between struck-off and compliant companies in the same data.
Why this matters for a self-managed board
If your building's company has three or more directors and someone clearly named as secretary, the data suggests you're already in the group least likely to end up under a strike-off notice. If it's down to one or two people with nobody formally named, that's worth treating as the specific gap to close, not a vague sense that "we should probably sort out our admin at some point."
Frequently asked questions
How many companies did this look at?
Thousands. We swept the public Companies House register across 173 London postcode districts, covering the E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W and WC areas, and filtered down to genuinely leaseholder-run boards rather than agent-run shell structures. It is a London dataset, not a national one, so read it as a picture of London's self-managed blocks rather than of the whole country. We have no particular reason to think London is unusual here, but we have not tested that.
Is board size or having a named secretary the bigger factor?
Both show a strong, independent pattern in the data. A named secretary shows the larger risk difference on its own (roughly a sixfold gap), but the two tend to go together in practice: smaller boards are also the ones least likely to have got round to naming a secretary.
Does this mean a one-director company will definitely be struck off?
No. It's a pattern across thousands of companies, not a prediction for any single one. Plenty of small boards stay compliant for years. It does mean a small board with nobody named as secretary is, statistically, in the highest-risk group, worth acting on rather than dismissing.