10 reasons why companies continue to maintain company registers

From 18 November 2025, all relevant information previously held on these company registers is provided to, and maintained at, Companies House. The requirements to file information accurately and in good time are reinforced, with the potential for penalties and other legal consequences – for example, a director not properly notified to Companies House in a suitable period may not legally act as such – for failure to do so.

This was intended as a positive change for companies and their professional advisers:

• Reducing the time and effort that previously went into maintaining local registers;
• Limiting duplication of information; and
• Mitigating the potential risk of inconsistency between company registers and Companies House submissions

This means that the only one of the previous core company registers that companies now need to maintain locally is the register of members (alongside other records such as resolutions and minutes of directors’ and shareholders’ meetings). The option, available since 30 June 2016, for private companies to elect to maintain their register of members at Companies House instead of maintaining it locally, was removed from 26 January 2026. The register of members must now be maintained locally, at the company’s registered office address or a single alternative inspection location (SAIL).

Based on provisions in sections 46–50 of ECCTA, we expect there to be further requirements implemented in the future related to the local register of members. As yet, there is no precise detail or implementation timescale for such additional requirements.

How are companies maintaining registers since 18 November 2025?

While the expectation was that companies and their accountants would welcome the removal of the removal of the requirement to maintain registers, the reality has been quite different. Before implementation, it was not a part of the ECCTA regime that caused much enthusiasm or comment. I heard from several accountants that they intended to maintain a full suite of registers, although I assumed this might change once the new regime bedded in.

From 18 November 2025, we’ve seen a strong pattern of companies and their advisers continuing to maintain a suite of company registers. These remain fully available in Inform Direct at the touch of a button, produced automatically as you complete transactions rather than requiring separate data entry. That full suite remains a requirement for many accountants when we talk to them about how Inform Direct can transform their company secretarial compliance. The company registers remain one of the most viewed features in Inform Direct.

It seems, therefore, that for many the company registers weren’t ever just a necessary evil, but a task that added value or provided outputs that are useful. As a layer of local record-keeping that serves as a cross-check on the public register, the fact that companies and their advisers are keen to keep them active shows a commitment to ECCTA’s aims of improving corporate transparency and tackling fraud that goes beyond specific legal requirements.

Here we look in detail at the reasons why so many continue to maintain full company registers, and why for others it might be worth another look as part of an effective company secretarial compliance regime.

10 reasons to maintain a full suite of local company registers

The public register at Companies House is far from immune from inaccuracies.

What is recorded for PSCs has been particularly subject to criticism, with a lot of clearly incorrect or inconsistent information visible on Companies House’s website, and a number of Companies House staff employed solely to query PSC data. From November 2025, we have also all seen quite how many dates of birth for company directors are incorrect, to say nothing of the inconsistent names and out of date addresses that pollute the record.

A local suite of registers provides an independent, company-controlled baseline against which errors in the central register can be identified and challenged, with supplemental or corrective filings as required. Without it, a company may not even realise the public record has drifted from reality. It is not unknown, for example, for changes to one company to be transferred to another, even without an appropriate submission being made.

The Companies House register is a public filing system, not an operational management tool.

For practical corporate governance purposes – board meetings, banking mandates, loan facilities, property transactions, completion of Know Your Customer forms – a well-maintained local suite of company registers is vastly more convenient and reliable than interrogating the public register. Professional advisers, lenders, and counterparties often expect a neat bundle of corporate information to be produced. The standard form of local registers is likely to be invaluable in this situation.

A consolidated, packaged set of documentation will be particularly important in any sale, investment, or financing transaction.

Upon such an event, the company will need to provide a wide range of information, typically including the statutory books. An investor or the solicitors facilitating a transaction will often expect them in the standard, ‘local’ form, because historical data held at Companies House can be difficult to navigate, incomplete in detail, or subject to processing delays.

A company that has maintained a full suite of local registers will be significantly better placed than one that has to reconstruct a corporate history from public filings. The latter could delay a transaction or involve significant effort or accrue cost on the part of the company’s legal advisers.

It’s valuable for the directors of a company, alongside their professional advisers, to review the company’s registers on a regular basis. Such a review helps to ensure everything is correct and up to date, or at least identify any problems, inconsistencies or outstanding updates to submit to Companies House in a relatively timely fashion.

Many accountants use the annual confirmation statement as an opportunity to initiate this review, supplying a copy of the full suite of company registers to their clients for comment. This is likely easier than asking company directors to review the filing history on Companies House’s website, and therefore more likely to identify whether additional submissions are required ahead of filing the confirmation statement.

All companies are still required by law to maintain a local register of members. Even those few companies that had previously elected to maintain their register of members at Companies House since 2016 must keep a local statutory register of members since 26 January 2026.

The register of members is most useful and most coherent when it sits alongside records of directors, secretaries and PSCs. Maintaining the register of members in isolation, while discarding the others, creates an incoherent, fragmented picture. The natural logic is to maintain the full suite of registers as a single coherent local corporate record.

For companies formed before 18 November 2025, there will be an existing suite of local company registers, most likely also including a locally maintained register of members.

These registers will usually have been created when the company was incorporated and tell a pertinent story of key activities since formation. Ongoing updates to the company registers continue that story, preserving corporate history in a consistent and readily accessible form.

It also enables an assessment of the position of the company at any point in its life – who the directors, PSCs and shareholders were, for example. While the records that are visible on Companies House’s public register show what has been filed, they do not reveal the full history in context and are much harder to digest.

This approach is particularly beneficial in those cases where new Companies House submissions are made but dated before 18 November 2025. While that should be unusual, it’s surprising how many such filings newly appear on the public record each day and which therefore should appear in the local registers that pertained before November 2025 if they are to be comprehensive. A method that maintains local registers regardless of the date of change ensures a fully integrated record that preserves a continuous narrative.

Many accountants providing an integrated company secretarial service will long have maintained their clients’ local registers as part of that offering.

Clients will often be comfortable with the format of the local registers. Even if it is now not strictly required by legislation, that familiarity may be something clients value, especially if it provides extra peace of mind that records are up to date and compliant.

The discipline of maintaining a full register set encourages good governance habits and displays a commitment to company secretarial compliance. For professional advisers — particularly accountants acting as company secretarial agents — the registers are a tool for staying on top of client changes and prompting timely filings. If advisers abandon local records on the basis that the law no longer requires them, the risk of filing errors and missed updates to Companies House increases.

This is also a professional liability question: if a client suffers loss because an adviser failed in supporting them to maintain adequate records, the absence of local registers may make it harder to reconstruct what happened and when.

Many companies in particular industries face compliance obligations beyond those affecting all UK companies. Even if the Companies Act no longer mandates local registers, it may be advantageous to maintain them to support the requirements of other regulatory frameworks.

Companies House has faced situations where the names and addresses of individuals were used in connection with a company without their consent, or where rogue individuals were appointed to companies without the consent of the legitimately appointed officers.

While the likelihood of issues is reduced by the introduction of compulsory identity verification of directors and PSCs, it is not eliminated entirely.

A company maintaining its own local register has an immediate, authoritative record of who is properly appointed and who is not. If fraudsters register false directors at Companies House, a company with a well-maintained local register can demonstrate the discrepancy clearly and quickly.

One of the strongest practical arguments may be the simplest.

The ongoing cost of maintaining local registers – especially where a professional adviser manages them using dedicated software such as Inform Direct – is minimal. The potential costs of not having them, in a dispute, transaction, or fraud scenario, could be significant. This is an asymmetric risk calculation that would lead many well-advised companies to maintain them voluntarily.