You Worked Too Hard for Your UK Entity to Lose It Over a Missing Letter

A Confirmation Statement (CS01) is an annual filing you submit to Companies House to verify that your UK limited company’s public records are accurate and up to date. Every UK LTD has to file one – that includes companies where the directors are based in Pakistan and have never set foot in the UK. It doesn’t matter whether your company traded or earned a single penny during the year. The obligation still applies.

No – they’re two completely separate things. The confirmation statement goes to Companies House and is about your company’s records. The Corporation Tax return goes to HMRC and covers your finances and tax position. Filing one has no effect on the other. You need both, every year, with different deadlines.

Technically yes. In practice, there’s a wall most NRPs run into – you need a Companies House online account and an authentication code that gets posted to your UK registered office. If you’re in Pakistan, that letter can take weeks to show up. By the time it does, the code may already be expired. Professional filing services deal with authentication directly, so this whole problem never reaches you in the first place.

Companies House can issue a strike-off notice, which can lead to your company being dissolved. Once that happens, your UK business bank accounts – Wise, Payoneer, Tide – can be frozen immediately. Your company’s credit history disappears. Getting a struck-off company restored through the courts can cost upwards of £5,000 and isn’t guaranteed. Filing on time is so much cheaper, it’s not a real comparison.

Once your 12-month review period ends – counted from your company’s incorporation anniversary – you have 14 calendar days to get the Confirmation Statement submitted. UK public holidays and weekends tighten that further. For Pakistani founders, a Friday UK deadline is already your weekend, which is exactly why having someone manage this on your behalf isn’t just convenient – it’s genuinely protective.

Since March 2024, under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, every director filing a Confirmation Statement has to declare that their company’s intended future activities are lawful. Running an eCommerce business, a SaaS product, a digital agency – whatever it is, you need to clearly confirm that in the filing. Submitting without this, or getting it wrong, leaves you with a non-compliant filing. We include it as standard in every submission we handle, so you don’t have to track it yourself.

Before we file anything, we review and confirm your registered office address, SIC codes, People with Significant Control (PSC) register, share capital structure, and shareholder records. Inaccurate SIC or PSC data can flag issues with Companies House and, in some cases, with UK banking providers too. We make sure everything checks out before anything gets submitted.

Yes, full stop. There’s no exemption for dormant or inactive companies. If your company is registered with Companies House and hasn’t been formally dissolved, you’re filing every year. That’s the rule.

Once you’ve submitted your details and approved the summary we send you, filing is typically done within 24 to 48 business hours. Your side of it – filling in the form and giving the go-ahead – takes under five minutes.

Companies House charges £34 for online submissions. A professional filing service adds a service fee on top of that, which covers the records review, deadline management, the lawful purpose declaration, and submission confirmation. That combined total is nowhere near what a late penalty, a reinstatement application, or recovering frozen payment accounts would cost you.