Changelog

Your choice on analytics cookies

The site now asks before using Google Analytics, which stays off unless you accept. Change your answer any time with the Cookies link at the foot of each page.

Companies that have left administration

The Administrations list and stats now include companies that have left administration, with their status now and when it ended, and past administrations from The Gazette are being added.

Every ratio explained

Hover any ratio's name for what it means, how it's worked out and how to read it.

Privacy notice, terms of use and a contact form

How the site uses personal data, the terms for using it, and a form for reporting mistakes or asking about your data.

Liquidation tab for companies liquidated without an administration

The insolvency tab now reads Liquidation, not Administration, when a company went straight into liquidation.

Interim accounts no longer shown as years

Interim and initial accounts, which a plc files to show it can pay a dividend, cover the parent company alone with no turnover. They're still listed under Filings but no longer appear as extra years with gaps in the figures and charts.

Hard-to-read scanned accounts re-read by Claude

When figures read from a scanned PDF don't add up, the profit and loss account and balance sheet are now read again by Claude and its figures used if they do. Hovering over a figure says which reader it came from.

New owners' ages from July 2017

The age of new company owners now counts people first recorded from July 2017, when existing companies had finished recording their long-standing owners; including the first half of 2017 made new owners look older.

Who forms new companies

Stats now shows how many of the last year's new companies were registered at a formation agent or virtual office, a shared address such as an accountant's, or the founder's own address, and lists the largest formation agents and virtual offices.

Why company formations rose

The companies formed each year chart marks the years when tax, fee and identity-check changes and the pandemic moved the numbers, with the likely reasons formations nearly tripled in 20 years.

Company lifespans, seasons and new owners' ages

Stats now shows companies formed each year for the last 20 years with the average per month, which months of the year are busiest for new companies, how long companies last before they're dissolved, and how old people are when they first take control of a company.

Stats for every UK company and their owners

The Stats page now covers the whole register: all 14 million companies ever registered by status and type, companies formed and dissolved each year, active companies by age, industry, nation, accounts type and address, overdue filings, the most popular words in names, and the people who own and control companies by age, nationality and residence.

Stats

A new page of charts and tables on UK companies, starting with administrations: how many companies enter administration each month, why they fail, which industries, how long they traded and the busiest insolvency firms.

COVID-19 when the pandemic helped

A statement saying a company did well during the pandemic (for example winning a PPE contract) is no longer counted as COVID-19 being a cause of its failure.

Search from every page

The search box for companies, directors and addresses is now in the header of every page, not just the home and company pages.

Sort administrations by date

Click Entered administration to switch between newest and oldest first; Years in business sorts too.

Former names

Administrators often rename a company ("XYZ Realisations Limited"), so company pages and the administrations list now show the name it traded under, and the administrations filter searches former names too.

Changelog

This page: every change to the site, newest first, with an Atom feed to follow along.

Popular companies

About 85 well-known UK names by sector, from Tesco and BP to Gymshark and Monzo, plus famous collapses such as Carillion, Thomas Cook and Wilko, each linked to the registered company behind the brand.

Years in business and practitioner firm

The administrations list shows how long each company traded before administration (sortable) and the insolvency firm its administrators work for. Click a firm to see all its administrations.

COVID-19 only when it's a stated cause

COVID-19 is tagged only when the administrators give the pandemic as a cause of the failure, not for standard paragraphs about virtual meetings or remote working, or for a pandemic-era loan mentioned on its own.

Reasons for administration as tags

Each company in administration is tagged with the reasons from its administrators' statement (funding withdrawn, rising costs, COVID-19, HMRC arrears and more). Filter the list by any reason.

Site menu

A menu on every page for search, popular companies, administrations, about and status; on phones it folds into a Menu button.

Companies in administration

Every UK company currently in administration, most recently entered first, with the date it entered administration, its industry, location and administrators. Updated daily.

For AI assistants and developers

An MCP server for AI assistants and agents, Markdown versions of company pages (add .md), a guide for language models at /llms.txt, and structured data on every company page.

Fair-use limits

Searches, the API and the MCP server have generous per-visitor limits, so new lookups stay quick for everyone.

A nicer About page

Redesigned with feature cards, how the data is sourced and how accuracy is checked.

Service status

Live health of each part of the site: Companies House connections, database, OCR and background processing.

Processing now

The home page shows which companies are being fetched or read right now, with progress.

Feature icons on the home page

Feature tour

An animated tour on the home page showing search, accounts, ratios, group structure, directors and shareholders, events, administration and the arithmetic checks, using real companies.

Address, postcode and director search

The search box also finds directors, and companies registered at a postcode or street address.

Postcodes with or without a space

EC1V7EB and EC1V 7EB now give the same results.

Years without a document still shown

A year whose accounts Companies House can't supply still appears in the statements, with a note.

Effective tax rates explained

Unusual tax rates (above 100%, or far from the UK rate for the year) are flagged, with an explanation of why they happen.

companydig

The site has a name, a logo, an About page, a footer, a sitemap and a feed of recently viewed companies with a More button.

Swinging fixed assets in older scanned accounts

Fixed assets and current assets misread from early-2000s scans are now recalculated from the balance sheet's own totals.

Missing revenue

Turnover on some scanned profit and loss accounts was being missed.

Administration tab

For companies that went into administration: the background and events from the administrators' statement of proposals, with the causes tagged.

Arithmetic checks on scanned figures

Every year is checked against the accounts' own sums (gross profit = revenue - cost of sales, and so on). Obvious OCR slips are corrected and marked; anything that still doesn't add up is highlighted.

Events tab

A timeline of each company's significant events: incorporation, name changes, changes of control, board changes, share capital, charges, late filing, financial milestones and insolvency.

Directors & Shareholders tab

Current and former officers and persons with significant control, each linked to their other companies.

Company size and labels

Each company is classed micro, small, medium or large, with clearer labels for its number and registered office.

Return on invested capital

ROIC added to the ratios.

Group entities: active-only toggle and instant tooltips

Hide dissolved entities on the group map; tooltips (including SIC code descriptions) appear immediately.

Clearer net assets chart

Cash is shown in green and borrowings in red.

Tagged accounts preferred

Where a filing is available as tagged iXBRL it's read exactly instead of by OCR, and all scanned filings were re-read with an improved reader.

Group map ownership

A company is no longer shown as owning its own overseas parent.

Misread figures

Overview figures in the wrong units, large tax credits and liabilities misread from scans, gross profit signs and opening cash balances.

Ownership index

A daily copy of Companies House's register of persons with significant control makes subsidiaries and people's shareholdings fast and complete.

Person pages

Click a director or shareholder to see all their directorships and shareholdings, with an active-only filter.

Group Entities tab

Owners up to the ultimate parent and subsidiaries down the tree, including overseas entities and their jurisdictions.

Companies House outages

Fetching now waits and retries through Companies House rate limits and outages, with clear messages.

Every set of accounts, decoded

Search any UK company and see every accounts filing from incorporation: profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, charts, ratios and CSV export. Large companies and groups use their consolidated figures.

Scanned accounts read by OCR

Older accounts filed as scanned PDFs are read with optical character recognition.