In the past month, we have seen substantive updates on the implementation of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA) in the form of the DBT’s second progress report and Companies House 2025-2026 business plan. The overall impression is that implementation of ECCTA continues apace, with an impressive statistics for the preceding year. The majority of enhanced powers for Companies House came into force on 4 March 2024 and the DBT reports that between March 2024 and March 2025, 100,400 companies were impacted by Companies House querying and removing false, misleading or incorrect information from the registers.

The big-ticket items for the coming year are:

• the implementation of the new offence of failure to prevent fraud, effective from 1 September 2025
• mandatory identity verification from autumn 2025 for all new directors and PSCs (exact date to be confirmed in secondary legislation), followed by a 12 month transition period for existing ones
• registration as an ACSP required for third party-agents filing documents at Companies House from spring 2026

The timeframes signalled in the progress report and 2025-2026 business plan are in keeping with previous messaging from Companies House although we are yet to see any draft regulations regarding the commencement of mandatory identity verification and subsequent transition period. It feels like summer now but September really isn’t far around the corner so businesses need to be seriously considering who in their organisation will need to have their identity verified and taking advantage of the option to verify voluntarily ahead of time. Please do get in touch if you need support.