Is your building's paperwork actually up to date?
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What this check looks at
It reads what Companies House publicly holds about your building's company and puts what actually predicts trouble on one screen — including the good news, so you can see there's nothing showing against you rather than having to infer it.
- Is a confirmation statement overdue, and by how many days. The single most common trigger for strike-off action.
- Is there active strike-off action showing against the company right now.
- When the next filing is due, so you know whether you have months or days.
- How many directors are on the board. Companies under strike-off notice average 1.82 directors; everyone else averages about three.
- Whether anyone is named as company secretary. More than half of self-managed buildings name nobody, and those companies are struck off at roughly six times the rate.
What a strike-off warning actually looks like
Rarely a dramatic letter, because the letters go to the registered office, which in a self-managed building is often a flat somebody moved out of. On the public register it shows as a company status of "active - proposal to strike off", and in the Gazette as a first notice. From that notice, the company can be dissolved at least two months later.
If that happens to the company that owns your building's freehold, the freehold passes to the Crown as ownerless property. Flat sales and lease extensions in the building then stall, for everyone, until it is put right. We have set out the full sequence and where you can still stop it, and what to do if it has already happened.
If the check turns something up
- File the overdue confirmation statement. £50 online, and doing it is usually enough for Companies House to drop the strike-off action. Step-by-step guide.
- Check the registered office is somewhere someone reads. If it is a former director's flat, every future warning goes to a stranger's doormat.
- Get every director's identity verified. Each one needs a Companies House personal code before the statement will go through, and it cannot be rushed on the day.
- Name a company secretary. Free, takes minutes, and it is the clearest single signal in our data that a building stays on top of this. The full guide to the role.
Questions
Is the compliance check really free?
Yes, and there is no account, no card and no email required to run it. It reads public Companies House data about the company you enter and shows you what it says. Nothing is written to our database.
What does the check actually look at?
Whether a confirmation statement is overdue and by how long, whether Companies House shows any active strike-off action, when the next filing is due, how many directors are on the board, and whether anyone is named as company secretary.
What is a strike-off notice?
A formal, public statement that the registrar intends to remove the company from the register. It appears in the Gazette after Companies House has written to the registered office, and the company can be dissolved at least two months later if nothing changes. For a company whose only asset is your building's freehold, that means the freehold passes to the Crown.
My building's company looks overdue. What do I do first?
File the outstanding confirmation statement. It costs £50 online, and filing it is usually enough for Companies House to discontinue strike-off action. Every director needs their Companies House personal code from identity verification, so start that early if anyone has not done it.
Does this work for Right to Manage companies too?
Yes. Right to Manage companies have the same Companies House obligations as share of freehold companies, and the check reads the same public data for both.
The figures above come from our own sweep of the public Companies House register across thousands of self-managed freehold and Right to Manage companies. Read the full findings.