How to Protect Your Home Address on the Companies House Register

Every director's details go on a public register the moment a company is incorporated. Most people never think about this until someone points out that their name, service address, and month and year of birth are searchable by anyone, for free, on the Companies House website. For most directors that's a minor inconvenience. For some, it's a genuine safety risk.

What's public by default, and what isn't

Companies House guidance sets out two addresses for each director. The service address is public and can be the company's registered office or another address entirely. The usual residential address goes on a separate, private part of the register and normally isn't shown to the public.

There's one important exception. If a director's home address is also used as the company's registered office, it becomes public. Companies House guidance is explicit on this point: the registered office has to be an "appropriate address" in the country where the company is registered, and it's the address people actually see when they look the company up.

Applying to have your information protected

Where someone can show a serious risk of violence or intimidation linked to the company or their role in it, Companies House allows an application to suppress personal information from the public register. According to current guidance, this covers home addresses for directors, LLP members, and people with significant control (PSCs), and in some PSC cases can remove their details from the public register entirely.

The application isn't automatic. It costs £100 for a standard application, or £15 if you already hold protection and need to extend it. It has to be submitted by post with supporting evidence, such as police reports or examples of targeting, and Companies House states it can take anywhere from 30 days to a year to decide, depending on complexity. As of 11 August 2026, the online application route has also been withdrawn while a replacement service is developed, so postal applications are currently the only option.

There's a catch that trips a lot of directors up. Companies House guidance states plainly that it does not have the power to remove a home address that's currently in use as the registered office. The address has to be changed first, and only then can an application to protect it be made. In other words, using your home address as your registered office and later deciding to protect it means fixing the underlying problem before the protection process can even start.

Why this matters more right now

Companies House has been getting more thorough, not less. Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, identity verification became mandatory from 18 November 2025, with existing directors and PSCs given 12 months from that date to confirm their verified identity. Companies House itself has said that 6 to 7 million people will need to complete this by around mid-November 2026. The register is being tied more closely to real, checked identities than it has ever been before, which makes the question of what's publicly attached to your name a more pressing one, not a less pressing one.

The simpler fix: don't put your home address on the register in the first place

Given how the protection application actually works, the more reliable approach for most directors is to avoid the problem entirely. Using a registered office address service instead of a home address means your residential address was never on the public register to begin with. There's nothing to apply to protect, and nothing to change before you can apply.

We provide registered office addresses with optional mail scanning, so client correspondence and statutory mail get handled without a home address ever going on the public register. If you're setting up a new company, or you've realised your home address is currently listed as your registered office, get in touch with Paramount Company Formations and we'll talk you through switching it over.