Which date is actually yours?

14 October 2026 is the Companies House identity verification deadline for the client company in this worked example, and the UK accountant who files its confirmation statement had 18 November 2026 written in the diary. The gap is 35 days, three directors have no personal code, and the estimated penalty exposure across the four unverified people is GBP 1,000 to GBP 4,000.

Identity verification at Companies House became mandatory on 18 November 2025, and existing directors and PSCs were given a twelve-month transition ending 18 November 2026. That end date is what an assistant repeats when you ask when you have to verify. It is the backstop for the regime, not the date any particular director is judged on.

A serving director is judged on the company's next confirmation statement. They have to give their Companies House personal code on that statement, and the statement is rejected while any director on it is missing a code. So the deadline is the CS date in the company record, which for most companies falls mid-transition. A company with a confirmation statement date of 14 October 2026 quietly lost 35 days of the runway it thought it had.

A PSC who is not also a director is dated differently again: a fourteen-day window that starts on the first day of their month of birth as recorded on the register. A PSC born in April was due on 15 April 2026; a PSC born in November is due on 15 November 2026.

The money is not theoretical. Acting as a director while unverified is a criminal offence under the Act, and Companies House has published financial penalty bands running from GBP 250 for a minor offence up to GBP 2,000 for a very serious one, with a warning notice giving at least 28 days to put things right first. Non-compliance is more likely to be treated as serious where three or more offences fall in a five-year period, and disqualification and striking off sit behind that.

The checker turns those rules into two dates and one number. With a confirmation statement date of 14 October 2026, three unverified directors, one PSC born in November and a clean five-year record, it returns a director deadline of 14 October 2026, a PSC deadline of 15 November 2026, 31 days to the first of them, 35 days earlier than the backstop, and GBP 1,000 to GBP 4,000 of exposure across four people, with the confirmation statement marked as blocked.

Change one field and the answer moves. A company whose CS date was 20 February 2026, with one unverified director, a PSC born in April and three filing offences behind it, is 205 days past its first deadline and is priced against the GBP 750 to GBP 2,000 band. A company with a CS date of 2 December 2026 gets no December deadline at all: the transition ends first, so the director date clamps back to 18 November 2026.

Nothing free does this, because nothing free knows your confirmation statement date or your PSC's birth month. Guidance gives you the regime; a chatbot gives you the backstop. The free tool runs the whole calculation for as many companies as you like, in the browser, with nothing uploaded. The licence key adds a different thing rather than a bigger one: a .csv export of every company you have checked, and browser alarms before each saved deadline. UK company secretarial packages that carry this deadline for you are advertised between GBP 140 and GBP 499 per company per year.

Sources: gov.uk guidance on when you need to verify your identity for Companies House; Companies House approach to non-compliance with mandatory identity verification; Companies House approach to financial penalties.