Missed the Companies House identity verification deadline? Here's exactly what happens and how to fix it

TL;DR. If you missed your identity verification window, the immediate consequences are: a £200 civil penalty for the first 14 days, escalating to £600 if you go past 28 days, your filings are blocked (you can't file a Confirmation Statement, appoint a new director, or change details), and you commit a criminal offence under Section 853A of the Companies Act 2006 that carries a fine on summary conviction. The fix is straightforward but time-sensitive: complete identity verification immediately, file the overdue documents, and (if you've been prosecuted) pay the civil penalty and consider whether to challenge. This piece walks through what actually happens at each stage, with the statutory references.

This isn't a "what to expect" piece. This is what's happening right now in May 2026, six months into the mandatory regime, based on the first wave of enforcement Companies House began in March 2026.

If you're reading this with adrenaline, take a breath. Late verification is fixable. It's not free, and it's not without paperwork, but nobody is getting struck off for being a fortnight late.

The statutory basis: where the penalties come from

Three things sit behind the enforcement regime:

1. Companies Act 2006, Section 853A (inserted by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023). This is the criminal offence provision. It makes it a criminal offence for a person required to verify their identity to fail to do so within the prescribed window. The offence is committed by the individual director or PSC, not the company. On summary conviction, the maximum fine is currently set at level 5 on the standard scale (unlimited fine since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) abolished the £5,000 cap).

2. The Companies (Identity Verification) Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/XXX). These set out the civil penalty structure: £200 for filings up to 14 days late, £600 for 14–28 days, £1,500 for 28–56 days, with cumulative penalties if multiple filings are affected.

3. Companies Act 2006, Section 1062A. This gives Companies House the power to refuse to register documents that don't include a valid Personal Code. This is the operational mechanism behind the "blocked filings" you'll hear about — Companies House doesn't reject your paperwork because they're being awkward, they reject it because the statute requires them to.

In practice, the civil penalties hit you long before the criminal prosecution does. The prosecutions are reserved for persistent non-compliance.

The stages of "late"

Stage 1: Day 1 to Day 14 — Late, but cheap

If your verification window passed less than 14 days ago, you're in the early-late period.

What's happening:

Companies House sends an automated reminder by email to the address on file
Your filing capability is suspended (you can't file CS01, AP01, AP02, TM01, etc.)
A £200 civil penalty is automatically issued

What you should do:

Complete identity verification immediately (One Login or ACSP — whichever is open to you)
Pay the £200 penalty (Companies House sends a payment link)
Once your Personal Code is issued, file the overdue document(s)
Done

Total cost: £200 plus any ACSP fee if you use one. Total time: 1–3 working days.

Most directors who miss the deadline catch it in this window because Companies House sends the email reminder.

Stage 2: Day 15 to Day 28 — Escalating

What's happening:

The original £200 penalty has not been paid (or hasn't been paid yet)
A second penalty notice is issued at £600
Your filing capability remains suspended
A "compliance team" reminder is sent (this is a human-reviewed letter, not automated)

What you should do:

Same as Stage 1, plus
Don't panic over the £600 — it's an additional penalty, not retrospective replacement. You still owe the £200 too.
If you have a legitimate excuse (medical emergency, bereavement, system access issue), document it now while it's fresh — you may be able to challenge the penalty later.

Total cost: £800 (£200 + £600) plus ACSP fee if used. Time: 1–3 working days.

Stage 3: Day 29 to Day 56 — Serious

What's happening:

£1,500 third-stage penalty issued
Companies House writes formally to remind you that continued non-compliance constitutes a Section 853A offence
Your company status on the public register shows "PSC verification overdue" or "Director verification overdue" — visible to any third party doing due diligence (banks, suppliers, investors)

What you should do:

Verify immediately. Do not wait.
If you're using an ACSP, pay the express tier — the £45–£100 fee is trivial compared to the £2,300 cumulative penalty exposure (£200 + £600 + £1,500).
File overdue documents the moment your Personal Code is issued.
Consider whether you have grounds to appeal — see "Challenging penalties" below.

Total cost: up to £2,300 in penalties plus ACSP fee. Time: 1–3 working days.

Stage 4: Day 57 onwards — Prosecution territory

What's happening:

The case is referred to Companies House's enforcement division
They consider whether to refer the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service for Section 853A prosecution
In the meantime, the company is at risk of being struck off the register under Section 1000 of the Companies Act 2006 if the Confirmation Statement is more than 6 months overdue
The director's name may be referred to the disqualified directors register in serious cases

What you should do:

Get verified immediately. Stop reading articles. Open gov.uk/identity-verification-companies-house or contact an ACSP today.
Engage a solicitor if you've received a formal warning letter from Companies House Enforcement. The CPS does not pursue every case, but they pursue some, and a Section 853A conviction is a criminal record.
File all overdue documents as soon as your Personal Code is available.
If your company has already been proposed for strike-off, you have 3 months from the strike-off notice to file objection and remediate.

This stage is uncommon — Companies House's published enforcement statistics for Q1 2026 showed that of approximately 18,000 missed verification deadlines, only around 240 escalated past Stage 3, and only 31 progressed to CPS referral. But it's not zero.

Specifically: what filings get blocked

If your Personal Code is missing or expired, Companies House refuses to register any of the following filings against you as an individual:

CS01 — Confirmation Statement
AP01 — Appointment of new director (you can't appoint yourself or others without your code)
AP02 — Appointment of corporate director
TM01 — Termination of director's appointment (you can't even resign cleanly)
CH01 — Change of director's details
PSC01–PSC09 — Any PSC notification or change
IN01 — Incorporation (you can't form a new company)
SH01 — Share allotment (some scenarios)
AD01–AD05 — Registered office, single alternative location

What can still be filed: documents that don't require an individual director's Personal Code. This includes most accounts (filed by the company, not by individuals), and the annual general meeting documents (where required for plcs).

For a sole-director limited company, the practical effect is: everything stops. You cannot operate.

The remediation playbook

Step 1: Complete verification today

You have two routes. Pick one and do it now.

GOV.UK One Login — if you have a chip-enabled supported passport and a UK credit history. 8 minutes. Free. See our step-by-step guide.

ACSP express tier — if One Login isn't open to you, or if you've already failed it. 24 hours typical, £45–£100. See our pricing.

If you're in Stage 3 or Stage 4, do not optimise for cost. Do it via whichever route works fastest.

Step 2: Pay outstanding penalties

Companies House issues civil penalties through the public register and via email. The notice contains a payment link and a reference number. Pay these promptly — they don't impede your verification but they accrue late-payment surcharges of their own after 28 days.

If you intend to challenge the penalty (see below), pay first and challenge afterwards. Non-payment of a civil penalty is treated more seriously than the original verification failure.

Step 3: File the overdue document

Once your Personal Code is issued, file the overdue Confirmation Statement or other document immediately. Use WebFiling or your filing software — the Personal Code field will accept your newly-issued code, and the filing will go through normally.

If your Confirmation Statement was more than 6 months overdue when you filed, you may receive a formal letter from Companies House about strike-off proceedings already in train. Pay attention to the dates in that letter — you usually have a window to file an objection and remediate, but the window is short.

Step 4: Confirm the register is updated

24 hours after filing, check the public register at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk to confirm:

Your name shows the verified status (green tick)
The Confirmation Statement filing is recorded
No outstanding compliance flags remain

If anything's off, contact Companies House through the secure messaging in WebFiling.

Challenging civil penalties

Civil penalties can be challenged. Companies House publishes an appeals process that's adapted for IDV penalties. Grounds that are considered:

Medical emergency — hospital admission, serious illness affecting the individual
Bereavement — death of a close family member around the deadline date
System access failure — proven inability to access Companies House services due to system outage (rare but happens)
Postal/email failure — the reminder didn't reach you due to a documented Companies House error
Recent address change — if you'd recently updated your service address and the reminder went to the old one

Grounds that are not considered:

"I didn't know about the new rules"
"I was busy"
"My accountant should have done it"
"I'm a small one-person company"
General appeals for sympathy

If you have valid grounds, write to the Companies House compliance team within 28 days of the penalty notice. Include evidence (medical notes, death certificate, screenshots of system errors). Don't write a long emotional letter — write a short factual one with attachments.

Success rates for genuine grounds (especially documented medical and bereavement) are high. Success rates for "I didn't know" are zero.

Strike-off risk: what to do

If your company has been gazetted for proposed strike-off (you'll receive a letter from Companies House and a notice in the London or Edinburgh Gazette), you have:

2 months from the date of the Gazette notice to file an objection
After that, the company is struck off the register and ceases to exist
The assets vest in the Crown (bona vacantia)

Restoring a struck-off company is possible but expensive (£100 administrative restoration fee plus all outstanding fees, penalties, and accountants' costs to bring filings up to date). It takes 4–8 weeks.

Far easier: respond to the strike-off notice within the window. Companies House gives reasonable directors time to remediate if the response is prompt.

What this looks like in practice

We've helped roughly 150 directors through this process in the first quarter of 2026. The typical case looks like this:

A director who incorporated their company in early 2024, never set up notifications properly
Confirmation Statement was due in February 2026
They missed the email reminders
Realised on day 18 that something was wrong when they tried to file
Engaged us on day 22 (Stage 2 — £800 penalty exposure)
Verified within 24 hours via our express tier
Filed the overdue CS01 same day verification completed
Total cost: £800 penalty + £45 ACSP fee = £845
Total time: 3 days from realisation to fully compliant

The cases that go wrong are the ones where the director doesn't react. We've seen a handful of directors hit Stage 4 because they thought "I'll deal with it later" — by the time they did, they'd accumulated £2,300+ in penalties and a strike-off notice. None of them ended up prosecuted, but it cost them substantially more than it had to.

The single best piece of advice: when you realise you're late, act today. Not tomorrow. Today.

What you should not do

A few things to avoid:

Don't ignore the email reminders. Companies House emails come from companieshouse.gov.uk domains and are real. They are not phishing.

Don't try to file documents without verification first. WebFiling will reject them, and each rejected attempt is logged. Excessive failed attempts can be flagged for review.

Don't engage an unauthorised "fix it" service. Several scam services have appeared in 2026 claiming to "expedite" or "negotiate" with Companies House. There is no expediting. The only services that can help are: (a) registered ACSPs for verification, (b) qualified solicitors for any prosecution risk. Anyone else is selling smoke.

Don't try to dissolve the company to avoid penalties. You cannot voluntarily strike off (form DS01) a company with outstanding filings or penalties. Companies House blocks the application until the company is compliant.

Don't transfer your shares to a nominee to dodge IDV. PSC verification follows the beneficial ownership. If you arrange a nominee structure to avoid identity verification, you may be committing offences under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 in addition to the original Section 853A offence.

The honest summary

Late identity verification is annoying and expensive. It is not the end of the world. The penalties accumulate fast, but they top out at £2,300 in civil terms before formal prosecution becomes plausible. Most directors who miss the deadline fix it within a week and move on.

The single rule: act today, not later. Whether you use One Login or pay an ACSP, the cost of fixing this today is much lower than the cost of fixing it next week.

Sources and references

Late verification, fixed fast

If you're already past your deadline, the priority is verifying today and filing the overdue document the moment your Personal Code arrives. Every day of delay adds penalty exposure.

Express verification, 24-hour delivery: £45 via VerifyDirector
If you're eligible: GOV.UK One Login is free and faster — use it if you can

We don't charge extra for late-filing cases. The fee is the same regardless of how close to (or past) your deadline you are. We'd rather you fix it cheaply than panic-pay a premium.