Confirmation statements: the deadlines that catch firms out

No filing generates less fear and more missed deadlines than the confirmation statement. It costs £34 online, usually takes minutes, and confirms information Companies House already holds. But its deadline mechanics are unlike the accounts deadline everyone plans around — and that difference is where firms get caught.

How the deadline actually works

Every company must file a confirmation statement at least once every 12 months. The 12-month review period runs from incorporation or from the date of the last statement, and the filing is due within 14 days of the review period ending. Fourteen days — against the nine months a private company gets for accounts. A reminder cadence designed around accounts is an order of magnitude too slow for the CS01.

The three classic traps

• The drifting date — filing early is allowed and resets the review period, so the due date moves. A statement filed early in one year quietly shifts every subsequent deadline, and a diary set up once is now wrong.
• The "nothing changed" trap — the statement is due even if there is nothing to confirm. Dormant companies and single-director companies miss it most, because there is no other activity to prompt anyone.
• The new-client gap — companies onboarded mid-year arrive with a review period already running. If the previous agent filed the last statement, nobody in the new firm has the date in a diary at all.

What is at stake

There is no automatic late-filing penalty, which lulls people — but failing to file is a criminal offence for the company and its officers, and it is the register signal Companies House acts on fastest. Persistent failure leads to the strike-off process: a company can be removed from the register, its assets passing to the Crown as bona vacantia, over a filing that takes minutes. Since ECCTA, the statement also carries more weight, confirming a registered email address and that the company’s future activities are lawful.

Making it un-missable

The fix is to stop tracking confirmation dates by hand. FilingIQ reads each company’s review period from the register, follows the date when it drifts, and alerts on a ladder tuned to the 14-day window rather than the nine-month one. The confirmation statement stays the easiest filing of the year — it just stops being the most forgettable.