There is no single November deadline
Search for this and you will be told, over and over, that the deadline is 18 November 2026 and you have until then. That is wrong in a way that matters, because for a great many people the real date is a good deal sooner and looks nothing like a November anything.
18 November 2025 started a twelve month transition period. It was the day identity verification became a legal requirement. It is not itself a date anybody has to act by. Inside that period every individual has their own window, computed from their own facts, and two directors of the same company can easily have different ones.
The rule nobody guesses
If you are a person with significant control but not a director, your deadline is the first 14 days of your own birth month.
That is not a summary of the rule, it is the rule. Companies House put it in these words: if you are a PSC but not a director of the company, you must complete identity verification within the first 14 days of your birth month.
Read that again, because of what is not in it. There is no confirmation statement in it. No accounting reference date, no year end, no incorporation anniversary. Nothing about your deadline comes from the company at all. Companies House holds your month and year of birth on the register, and the month is what drives the date.
Born in March? Your window is 1 to 14 March, and it does not care what the company does. Most people miss it for exactly this reason: they were watching a company date, and their date was never a company date.
If you are a director and a PSC, you have two
This is extremely common in a small company: one or two people who are both on the board and on the PSC register. They have two separate deadlines, and they are days apart.
- As a director: your personal code goes on the company's next confirmation statement. The deadline is the confirmation statement deadline you already had.
- As a PSC: a 14 day window opening the day after that same confirmation statement date. Companies House's worked example: a confirmation statement date of 31 March 2026 gives a PSC window of 1 to 14 April 2026.
Filing the statement does not close the PSC window. The trap here is not complexity, it is that the first one feels like the job finished, and the second one sits two weeks later with nothing to remind you.
Appointed since November 2025?
Much simpler, and worth knowing because a lot of the anxious reading on this subject is written for people it does not apply to.
A new director provides their personal code as part of the filing that appoints them. There is no window to miss, because the appointment cannot be made without it.
A new PSC can give the code when they are first added to the register, or within 14 days of the date on the direction letter Companies House sends shortly afterwards.
What happens if you miss it
Verification is a legal requirement rather than a form of good practice, and an unverified person in a role that requires verification is committing an offence. The register is annotated, which matters more than it sounds: anybody who looks the company up can see it, and the people who look a company up are usually deciding whether to give it credit or work.
What you should not do is wait for next year's window to come round. The duty does not pause in between. If yours has gone, verifying late is a considerably better position than staying unverified until March.
What you need to hand
Less than most pages about this suggest, which is the other reason it gets left. If you are a PSC and not a director, the whole answer comes from your month of birth. If you are a director, it comes from your confirmation statement date, and last year's is fine because it recurs annually.
Nobody needs your name, your company number or your full date of birth to tell you when your window is, so this page does not ask for any of them, and nothing you type into it leaves your browser.
Common questions
Is the deadline 18 November 2026?
No. Almost everybody reads 18 November 2025 as the deadline, and it is not one. That date was when identity verification became a legal requirement, and it started a twelve month transition period. It is not itself a date anybody has to do anything by. Inside that period every person has their own window, worked out from their own facts, which is why two directors of the same company can have different dates and a PSC can have one that matches nobody.
When does a PSC who is not a director have to verify?
In the first 14 days of your own birth month. That is Companies House's wording, not a paraphrase: "If you're a PSC but not a director of the company, you must complete identity verification within the first 14 days of your birth month." Nothing about that date comes from the company. Not the confirmation statement, not the year end, not the incorporation date. Companies House holds your month and year of birth on the register, and the month is what drives your deadline.
I am a director and a PSC. Do I have one deadline or two?
Two, and they are days apart. The director half is the confirmation statement filing itself: your personal code goes on it. The PSC half is a separate 14 day window that opens the day after that same confirmation statement date. Companies House's own worked example is a confirmation statement date of 31 March 2026 giving a PSC window of 1 to 14 April 2026. Filing the statement does not close the PSC window, and the second one is easy to walk past because the first felt like the job was done.
When does an existing director have to verify?
As part of your company's next confirmation statement. It is not a 14 day window, which is the PSC rule and a genuinely different thing. You provide your Companies House personal code as part of that filing, so the deadline is the confirmation statement deadline you already had.
What if I was appointed after November 2025?
The rules are different and considerably simpler. A new director gives their personal code as part of the filing that appoints them, so there is no window to miss: you cannot be appointed without it. A new PSC can give the code when first added to the register, or within 14 days of the date on the direction letter Companies House sends shortly afterwards.
What do I actually need to answer this?
Less than you expect, and that is why this page asks so little. If you are a PSC and not a director, the answer needs your month of birth and nothing else at all. If you are a director, it needs your confirmation statement date, and last year's is fine because it recurs annually. Nobody needs your name, your company number or your date of birth, and nothing you type here leaves your browser.
Does this tool stop being useful after the transition period?
No. That is deliberate: the birth month rule and the new-PSC direction letter rule are permanent features of the system rather than transitional arrangements, so they carry on applying to every person who joins a PSC register from here on. What changes in November 2026 is the framing: before it, you have until your window; after it, an unverified person is committing an offence and the register is annotated.