Official Companies House index
Company director search
Find a UK director by name and see every company they are appointed to, or have been appointed to, and what happened to each one. Free, no sign-up, straight from the public register.
What this search is for
A company you have never heard of can be two weeks old and still look perfectly respectable, because a new company has no history to hold against it. The people running it do. Searching the director rather than the company is how you find out whether the same person has closed three firms owing money in the last five years, or has quietly run one for twenty.
How to search a director properly
- Get the exact spelling from the quote, invoice or contract. A limited company must show its registered name and number on those documents.
- Search the name here, then match on the month and year of birth and the address. Common names produce many entries and the register does not join them up.
- Open the appointments and look at what happened to each company, not how many there are.
- Run the company itself through a free check to see filing history, insolvency and the full director network in one place.
Questions people ask
Can I search Companies House by director name?
Yes. Every appointment at a UK limited company or LLP is on the public register, and the register is searchable by the officer's name as well as by company. This page searches that same official index and shows you the person's appointments, with the status of each company they were appointed to.
Why do I see the same person more than once?
Companies House indexes officers by the name recorded on each filing, not by a verified identity. If a director was filed once as John A Smith and once as John Andrew Smith, that is two entries. Month and year of birth, and the service address, are usually enough to tell whether two entries are the same person, but the register itself does not join them up.
What does a director's other companies tell me?
It is the single most useful thing on the register when you are deciding whether to pay a firm. A new company with no history looks clean by definition. Its directors usually have one. If several of their previous companies were dissolved with debts or entered insolvent liquidation, the risk you are taking is theirs, not the new company's.
Is one dissolved company a warning sign?
No. Companies are closed for ordinary reasons all the time: a contractor going back to employment, a dormant company tidied away, a solvent wind-up where every creditor was paid. What matters is the pattern and the type of closure. A voluntary strike-off is not the same event as a compulsory liquidation, and our report separates them rather than counting them together.
Does this show disqualified directors?
The disqualified directors register is a separate list, and a full CheckAFirm report checks it against the officers of the company you are looking at. This search covers appointments.
Is a director's home address published?
No. Companies House publishes a service address, which for most directors is the company's registered office or an accountant's address. Residential addresses were withheld from public view years ago, and the month and year of birth are published but the day is not.
Officer data comes from the Companies House public register and is read live. CheckAFirm does not edit it and cannot change what it says. Corrections have to be filed with Companies House by the company or the officer.