Company secretarial services that keep you off the strike-off register

A company secretary handles the legal and administrative obligations that come with running a UK limited company under the Companies Act 2006: filing the annual confirmation statement, keeping the statutory registers current, recording director and shareholder changes, drafting board minutes and resolutions, and making sure every Companies House deadline is met. It is the compliance layer that sits alongside your accounts and tax, and it is where most owner-managed companies quietly fall behind.

Since 2008, a private limited company is not legally required to appoint a named company secretary. That changed the rule, not the work. Every duty a secretary used to carry still has to be done, and where there is no secretary the directors are personally responsible for it. So the practical question is not whether the law forces you to have a secretary, it is whether you have the time and the knowledge to discharge those duties yourself without missing a filing.

Most directors we work with would rather not. They are running the business, not tracking review dates and PSC notifications. Outsourcing this to company secretarial services means a named accountant owns the calendar, prepares the filings, and tells you what needs signing and when, so the obligation never lands on your desk as a surprise. This is separate from your tax return and your bookkeeping, though we keep all three joined up.

If you are unsure which Companies House duties currently sit with you unaddressed, a free Tax Health Check will map your filing position in 30 minutes and flag anything overdue.

Missing a Companies House deadline is not a soft warning, it carries automatic financial penalties and, left unresolved, the loss of the company itself. The two deadlines that catch companies out are the annual accounts filing date and the confirmation statement.

Annual accounts are due nine months after your financial year end (or 21 months after incorporation for a company's first set). Miss that date and Companies House issues an automatic late filing penalty on a sliding scale, with no discretion and no appeal on the grounds of being busy. The penalty doubles if you file late in two successive financial years, so a one-off slip that becomes a habit gets expensive fast.

The confirmation statement is the other trap. It must be filed at least once every 12 months, within 14 days of the end of your review period. A late or missing confirmation statement is a criminal offence by the company and its officers. Unlike late accounts, it does not carry an automatic financial penalty, but the criminal liability and the strike-off risk make it just as serious: persistent failure to file is one of the most common triggers for Companies House to begin striking the company off the register. Strike-off means the company ceases to exist and any assets it holds, including its bank balance, pass to the Crown.

We track every review date and accounts date for you and prompt well in advance, so none of the figures below ever apply to your company.

The confirmation statement (form CS01) tells Companies House that the public record of your company is still correct. It is not your accounts and it is not a tax return, it is a yearly check of your company details. You must file at least one every 12 months, within 14 days of the end of your 12-month review period, the window that closes on your confirmation date. Most directors we work with would rather we just handled it, and we do, but here is what the process involves so you can see exactly what we take off your plate.

1. Sign in to Companies House WebFiling with your authentication code, or let us file it for you as your authorised agent.
2. Check your company details: registered office, directors, company secretary and registered email address are all current.
3. Confirm your statement of capital and shareholders, including any share transfers since last year.
4. Check your SIC codes still describe what your company actually does.
5. Confirm the people with significant control (PSC) on your register are correct.
6. Make the lawful purpose statement, confirming the company is carrying on lawful activity, which Companies House has required since 2024.
7. Pay the annual fee and submit.

If nothing has changed it is a quick confirmation, but it still has to be filed on time. We track your review date, check every detail against your records, and file before the deadline, so a confirmation statement is never the thing that puts your company at risk of strike-off.

Every UK limited company is legally required to keep a set of statutory registers and to make them available for inspection. These are not the same as your accounting records, and Companies House does not hold them for you. The registers are the company's own legal record of who owns it, who runs it, and who controls it.

The core registers required under the Companies Act 2006 are the register of members (shareholders), the register of directors, the register of directors' residential addresses, the register of secretaries where one is appointed, the register of charges, and the register of people with significant control (PSC). The PSC register records anyone who holds more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercises significant control, and it must mirror what you report to Companies House.

Separately, your accounting records must be kept for six years from the end of the financial year they relate to, and longer where assets last beyond six years, where a transaction spans more than one accounting period, or where a Company Tax Return was filed late or is under an HMRC compliance check. Failing to keep adequate records is itself an offence.

We maintain your statutory books, keep them inspection-ready, and update them every time a share is transferred, a director is appointed, or a PSC detail changes, so the registers and your public Companies House record never drift apart.

Every UK company must keep a register of its people with significant control, known as the PSC register, and keep that information accurate at Companies House. A PSC, sometimes called a beneficial owner, is usually anyone who holds more than 25% of the shares or voting rights, can appoint or remove most of the directors, or otherwise has significant influence over the company. Where a company rather than a person controls yours, it is recorded as a Relevant Legal Entity (RLE). This matters because failing to keep PSC information up to date is a criminal offence for the company and its officers, not just an admin slip.

• Identifying your PSCs and recording the correct nature of control for each one.
• Filing changes at Companies House within 14 days when someone becomes, or stops being, a PSC.
• Recording the official "no PSC" statement where a company genuinely has none, rather than leaving the record blank.
• Handling PSC identity verification, now required under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act.

You do not need to learn the PSC rules or watch the 14-day clock. You tell us when ownership or control changes, and your named accountant keeps the public record correct and on time.

At Zmartly, company secretarial support starts at £129 a month on a rolling contract, with the confirmation statement filing fee built in and no hidden disbursements. The £250 and £499 tiers add wider accounts and tax support for companies that want a single accountant covering everything.

Doing it yourself is not free, it just moves the cost. The direct Companies House charges are modest: £50 to file the confirmation statement online, or £110 by paper, plus the various form fees for changes during the year. The real cost is the time spent tracking review dates, the risk of a £150 to £1,500 late filing penalty if a deadline slips, and the knowledge gap that leads to a register being wrong or a PSC change going unreported.

The genuine saving from outsourcing is not the £50 filing fee, it is removing the single largest source of avoidable penalties for small companies, missed or late filings, and freeing the directors from a calendar they would otherwise have to police themselves. One avoided late filing penalty, doubled in a second year, can exceed a full year of the service.

If you want a clear picture of what your company's compliance currently costs you in time and exposure, get in touch and we will set out exactly which company secretarial services we would take over.

We act as outsourced company secretarial consultants for any UK company that wants its compliance handled properly, from a first-year startup to an established group. We act for private limited companies, LLPs (filing for their designated members) and PLCs, and our company secretarial services work the same whatever your size, with a named accountant owning the filings either way. We also handle a voluntary dissolution by form DS01 when you wind a company down, and step in to stop a compulsory strike-off if a missed filing ever triggers one.