Tax & Compliance

Company Secretarial & Companies House

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act has turned company secretarial work from a filing formality into a live compliance obligation. Identity verification, tighter data requirements and the move to software-only accounts filing all landed on practices that had treated this as an afterthought.

Accountancy practices
UK businesses

Discuss this service Engagement models

The problem

Reform has made a quiet service noisy

Identity verification for directors and persons with significant control began phasing in from November 2025. Companies House has confirmed that accounts filing will move to commercial software with iXBRL tagging, with the removal of abridged accounts and the profit and loss filing exemption for small companies now confirmed for April 2028 after an earlier 2027 target was pushed back.

Directors and PSCs must verify their identity, and firms are fielding the questions.
Filing routes that clients used themselves are closing, pushing work back to accountants.
Confirmation statement content has expanded and errors now carry more consequence.

At a glance

Service line: Tax & Compliance
Delivered for: Accountancy practices and UK businesses
Typical cadence: Rolling — Deadline calendar monitored continuously with advance escalation. Transactional — Two to three working days for share transactions and resolutions.
Engagement models: Available per job, on ad-hoc hours, or through a dedicated resource. Compare models.

Scope

What we maintain

Scope is agreed in writing before work starts and reviewed at each service review. Anything outside it is quoted separately rather than absorbed quietly and invoiced later.

Ongoing compliance

Confirmation statement (CS01) preparation and filing
Statutory register maintenance — members, directors, PSCs, charges
Registered office and business address changes
Director and secretary appointments, resignations and detail changes
SIC code updates and standard industrial classification review

Transactions

Share allotments, transfers, subdivisions and consolidations
Share buybacks and reductions of capital
Dividend documentation — board minutes, vouchers and resolutions
Articles amendments and special resolutions
Company formation, restoration and voluntary strike-off

Reform readiness

Identity verification tracking across your client base
PSC register review against the current disclosure requirements
Software filing readiness assessment ahead of the accounts filing changes
Deadline calendar with escalation on approaching confirmation statement dates

Software

Platforms we work in for this service

We work inside your existing systems under named user accounts. If your stack is not listed, tell us — we will confirm honestly whether we can support it immediately or need a ramp-up period.

Inform Direct
IRIS Company Secretarial
Companies House WebFiling
Elemental
Diligent

The boundary

What stays with your firm

This matters more than the task list. A delivery partner that blurs this line creates regulatory exposure for you, so we state it explicitly on every engagement.

Yours, always

The client engagement and engagement letter
Professional judgement and final review
Sign-off, submission authority and the fee
Client advice and the client relationship

Ours

Preparation, processing and documentation
Internal second-person review before release
Turnaround against the agreed timetable
Rework at our cost where the error is ours

Questions

Company Secretarial — what firms ask

All FAQs

Do you file directly with Companies House?

Under your authentication and on your instruction, if you want us to. Many firms prefer to keep filing with a named person internally and use us for preparation and register maintenance. Either arrangement is fine, provided it is documented at onboarding.

Services that usually move together

Most firms start with one service line. These are the ones that most often follow.

See the full picture

Talk to us about company secretarial.

Bring a real example — a live job, a difficult client file, a cycle you are behind on. A concrete case tells you far more about a provider than a capability slide ever will.

Book a scoping call See how we work

What to expect

No obligation and no minimum commitment to talk
A written proposal within five working days
A paid pilot before any long-term arrangement

Prefer email? hello@b4es.co.uk