Welcome to Companies House Press Desk

How can we help?

Companies House maintains a small press service for the benefit of the news media, trade press & entertainment industry. For this reason, while we do welcome professional interest in Companies House, we are unable to deal routinely with searches for information on the company register. Fortunately though, this is something any media-visitor can do themselves, by accessing our excellent on-line services, the basics of which are free of charge.

These include:

Guidance Booklets
Setting out director responsibilities, as well as giving information and key the key timings relating to company administration & management (director appointments, accounts, shareholder, etc), company formations & registrations, winding up companies, limited liability and other related legislation.

Our Services
These tap into the extensive public record, listing our available search facilities and advising on how to access them. Simple, basic information is free. More than that, all the standard, publicly available information you will require as a Press colleague, is available through our excellent 'WebCHeck' facility or from 'Companies House Direct', which is a subscription service, costing from £5 per month. These services are available from Monday - Sunday 7:00am to 12 Midnight UK Time and on most Bank Holidays, while allowing for essential maintenance work.

Please use these services before considering contacting us directly, as the e-public record can be considered authoritative in as far as we have been advised by companies as to their status. We will only ever access the same information that you can access yourselves, so there will be very little if anything we can add as a Press Desk to what you can already see regarding information shown, either on the register or in our guidance booklets.
We are, however, able to assist or advise with;

• Formal comments relating to how we apply the law relating to the register, guidance and clarifications of these and questions regarding the role of the Registrar.
• Statistical information relating to the register.
• Arranging formal interviews with senior colleagues for substantial articles and trade publications.
• Information relating to the introduction of the 2006 Companies Act (also available on the website).
• Advise on our roles and responsibilities as an executive agency of the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
• Assisting consumer interest programmes, etc, where this is considered appropriate.

If you have any other issues not covered above we would be happy to discuss these, and either resolve them where possible or point you in the right direction.

Companies House Press Desk is available from 09:00 am - 17:00 pm Monday - Friday, excluding Public Holidays.

Access to the Press Desk via telephone will initially be through our Contact Centre who will ask you for your details and about the basic nature of your call. They may be able to assist without the need to refer you to Press Desk. Tel: +44 (0)303 1234 500, Minicom 029 20381245. However, we can generally be more effective in answering your queries via e-mail and we invite you to contact us on press@companieshouse.gov.uk  If out of hours, we will make every effort to respond as soon as possible thereafter.