The UK Overdue Accounts Index 2026.
An analysis of the complete Companies House register, all 5.17 million active UK companies, showing who files their accounts late, and who files on time. The headline is the "first-year cliff": new companies miss their first accounts deadline at around six times the rate of established firms.
- 98,151
- active companies currently have overdue accounts1.96%, about 1 in 51
- 11.73%
- of companies aged 18–24 months are lateabout 1 in 8 new companies miss their first deadline
- 523,756
- are overdue on their confirmation statement10.28%, about 1 in 10
The first-year cliff
New companies miss their first accounts deadline at roughly six times the rate of established firms. The jump happens at the 18 to 24 month mark, when a company’s first set of accounts falls due, and then settles back down for every age band after.
| Company age | Accounts overdue |
|---|---|
| 0–12 monthsfirst accounts not yet due | 0.00% |
| 12–18 months | 0.01% |
| 18–24 monthsfirst-accounts deadline | 11.73% |
| 2–3 years | 3.30% |
| 3–5 years | 2.06% |
| 5–10 years | 1.90% |
| 10+ years | 1.46% |
The late-filing league table
Overdue rates by postcode area (areas with at least 5,000 registered companies). Cardiff tops the table, with the London postcodes close behind.
| Rank | Postcode area | Overdue rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | CF — Cardiff | 3.01% |
| 2 | N — North London | 2.52% |
| 3 | EC — City of London | 2.52% |
| 4 | WC — Central London | 2.47% |
| 5 | G — Glasgow | 2.38% |
| 6 | ML — Motherwell | 2.33% |
| 7 | M — Manchester | 2.33% |
| 8 | SE — South East London | 2.30% |
| 9 | BT — Belfast / NI | 2.29% |
| 10 | E — East London | 2.27% |
| 11 | WV — Wolverhampton | 2.26% |
| 12 | W — West London | 2.26% |
By nation
- London2.36%
- Wales2.31%
- Northern Ireland2.29%
- Scotland2.04%
- Rest of England1.81%
By sector
Hospitality and water & waste are the least reliable filers; agriculture, health and finance the most. The sectors with the highest and lowest overdue rates:
| Highest overdue rate | Overdue rate |
|---|---|
| Hospitality | 2.81% |
| Water & waste | 2.80% |
| Education | 2.46% |
| Transport & storage | 2.26% |
| Lowest overdue rate | Overdue rate |
|---|---|
| Finance & insurance | 1.67% |
| Health & social care | 1.65% |
| Agriculture | 1.42% |
“The standout figure is the first-year cliff. Nearly one in eight companies aged 18 to 24 months are late with their accounts, against fewer than one in fifty established firms. It is almost always a knowledge gap, not negligence: founders assume the first accounts work like the second, but a company’s first accounts are due 21 months after incorporation and cover a longer-than-usual first period, so the deadline arrives sooner and bigger than people expect. The fix is simple but has to be early: diarise the first-accounts date the day you incorporate, and get the bookkeeping going from month one rather than month eighteen.
What late filing costs
- £150Up to 1 month late
- £3751 to 3 months late
- £7503 to 6 months late
- £1,500More than 6 months late
Penalties are doubled if accounts are filed late in two successive financial years. (Source: gov.uk.)
Methodology
- Source
- Companies House Free Company Data Product, BasicCompanyDataAsOneFile-2026-06-01 (the complete, openly published UK register).
- Population
- 5,698,274 companies, of which 5,171,736 are active and 5,000,302 have an accounts due date.
- "Overdue" definition
- An active company whose next accounts due date had passed as of 23 June 2026 without updated accounts being filed (Companies House advances the due date once accounts are filed, so a past date on an active company indicates an outstanding filing).
- Age, region & sector
- Age = months between incorporation date and the snapshot date. Region = registered-office postcode area. Sector = SIC division mapped to a broad sector. Reproducible from the same free dataset.
- Published
- 27 June 2026. Data snapshot: 1 June 2026. Updated quarterly.
New company, or worried about a first-accounts deadline? See how we handle year-end and statutory accounts, filed on time, every time.