How to register a limited company at Companies House — and what to set up in week one

Forming a UK limited company is one of the genuinely efficient bits of British bureaucracy: the online application at Companies House costs £50 at the time of writing (up from £12 before May 2024) and most applications are approved within a working day. The difficulty is not the form — it is the decisions embedded in it.

Before you file

• Name check: it must be unique on the register and not breach sensitive-word rules. Check domain availability at the same time.
• Share structure: for a solo founder, one class of ordinary shares is normal — but think about whether co-founders or investors need separate classes now, not later.
• Registered office: a real UK address on the public record. Your home works; many founders use an accountant or registered-office service to keep it off the record.
• People with Significant Control: anyone holding more than 25 per cent of shares or voting rights must be declared on the PSC register — including you.

SIC codes and the five-minute choices that matter

Standard Industrial Classification codes describe what the company does — up to four, from a fixed list. They feel like trivia but are used by banks, insurers and government statistics. Pick the closest honest match; you can change them at the next confirmation statement if the business pivots.

Week one: the jobs the certificate does not mention

1. Open a business bank account — mixing personal and company money creates accounting pain immediately.
2. Register for corporation tax with HMRC within three months of starting to trade.
3. Set up bookkeeping from day one; reconstructing a year of transactions later is miserable.
4. Diarise the confirmation statement — due annually, with the first within 12 months of incorporation.
5. Decide whether to register for PAYE (if paying yourself a salary) and watch the VAT threshold.

Sole trader or limited company?

Incorporation gives you limited liability, a more credible face to clients, and easier equity structures later — at the cost of public filings, corporation tax administration and slightly heavier bookkeeping. Sole trading is simpler but mixes you and the business legally and financially. There is no universally right answer; the honest test is whether the business takes on commitments — contracts, staff, investors — that deserve a legal wrapper.

The filing itself, plus the model articles and fee schedule, is on the Companies House service on gov.uk. Check the current fee at the time you apply.

The ongoing obligations

Incorporation is the beginning of a compliance rhythm, not the end of a task list. The annual cycle: accounts filed at Companies House, a confirmation statement, corporation tax returns to HMRC, and PAYE or VAT filings if you have registered for them. Directors are legally responsible for keeping the public record accurate — changes of address, new shareholders, new PSCs. The founders who cope best are the ones who treat the filings as routine admin, diarised and boring, rather than discovering each deadline the week it is due.

One last practical point: the name you choose is a legal identifier, not a brand decision — you can trade under a different name and change the registered name later for a fee. Do not let the perfect name hold up the paperwork; businesses get renamed far more often than founders expect.