The ECCTA deadline is not 18 November, and 45% are already past theirs
In production since 8 May 2026
Almost every article about ECCTA identity verification gives you one date: 18 November 2026. We measured what the register actually says, across a random sample of real companies, and that date appears on nobody's record.
Not "rarely". On 627 in-scope directors and PSCs, zero carried 18 November 2026 as their verification date.
What the register actually does
Each director's deadline is their company's next confirmation-statement due date: the statement date plus 14 days. Companies House publishes it on the officer's own record, and because confirmation statements fall on the anniversary of incorporation, they are spread across the whole calendar.
The 12-month transition that began on 18 November 2025 bounds which statement dates fall inside the regime. It does not cap the deadlines those statements produce. A company whose statement date is 17 November 2026 - the last one inside the window - produces a verification deadline of 1 December 2026.
Companies House's own campaign site is explicit that 18 November 2025 "is not a deadline" and that it "marks the start of a 12-month transition period" in which people verify "by their due dates". The 1 December backstop is not a date they announce. It is what the register prints, which is why we measured it rather than quoting it.
What we measured
A stratified random sample of 352 active UK companies, incorporated between 1992 and 2025, covering 627 people in scope for identity verification, drawn on 24 September 2026.
| Finding | Result |
|---|---|
| Person's due date equals the company's next confirmation-statement date | 125 of 125 clean cases (100%) |
| Pending people already past their date | 45.0% |
| Pending people due within 30 days | 27.5% |
| Pending people due after 18 November 2026 | 7.4% |
| Earliest deadline seen | 18 November 2025 |
| Latest deadline seen | 1 December 2026 |
| People carrying 18 November 2026 itself | 0 |
The 45% is the number worth sitting with. If you have been treating November as the moment to act, for nearly half the people who still need to verify, the date has already gone.
Six real companies, six different dates
Every one of these is checkable on the public register today:
| Company | Number | Statement date | Verification due |
|---|---|---|---|
| L & R ROOFING LIMITED | 07378821 | 20 Jul 2025 | 3 Aug 2026 (past) |
| TAMAR BELLE LIMITED | 02745448 | 7 Sep 2025 | 21 Sep 2026 (past) |
| A. PARR LANDSCAPING SERVICES LIMITED | 05943742 | 22 Sep 2025 | 6 Oct 2026 |
| MAJESTIC TEXTILES LIMITED | 03185426 | 15 Oct 2025 | 29 Oct 2026 |
| ILAM STONE LIMITED | 03693458 | 6 Nov 2025 | 20 Nov 2026 |
| CARDINUS RISK MANAGEMENT LIMITED | 03127254 | 17 Nov 2025 | 1 Dec 2026 |
Six ordinary trading companies, and their deadlines span four months. A single national date describes none of them.
Two things this changes
"We'll deal with it in November" is the wrong plan for about half your book. The right question is not what the deadline is, it is which of your companies has already passed theirs. That is a per-company question with a per-company answer.
A deadline after 18 November is not a reprieve. Enforcement of the regime begins when the transition ends. A director whose own due date falls on 1 December is in an awkward gap, and we would not advise treating it as extra time.
Where this stops being computable
Two honest limits, because the same public data does not answer everything:
- PSCs who are not directors get a 14-day window starting the first day of their birth month. Companies House publishes month and year of birth, so this is computable too.
- Corporate PSCs and relevant legal entities require a check on a "relevant officer" that is not on the public register at all. Nobody can compute that from public data, and any tool claiming a complete answer for these is guessing.
Checking this yourself
Pick any company and open its officers on
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Each officer subject to verification
shows their own date. Compare it with the company's next confirmation-statement date on the
overview tab: they should match.
We have been reading these records since May 2026, and surface the per-person date rather than
a national one. Our page for any company shows the same thing:
https://registrum.co.uk/company/03127254.
Sample method: companies drawn at random across incorporation years, then every current director and individual PSC read from the live Companies House API on 24 September 2026, with each example above confirmed against the public register the same day. Figures are a snapshot of that day; the register changes daily.