Persons with Significant Control (PSC)
Who ultimately owns or controls each UK company — the beneficial-ownership register. It turns the company list into an ownership map: every company's controlling individuals and parent companies, so you can see who is really behind a business.
Financial services Professional & B2B services Business & companies
| Publisher | Companies House |
|---|---|
| Licence | Open Government Licence v3 what this means |
| Updates | Updated daily |
| Cost | Free — open data |
| Last verified | 2026-07-21 |
What your business can use it for
Customer & supplier checks
See who actually owns and controls a customer or supplier before you extend credit or sign — the beneficial owners behind the company, straight from the register, for your own due-diligence checks.
Risk assessment
Add ownership and control to any risk view — spot shared owners across companies, follow corporate parents, and flag structures that warrant a closer look.
Works with data you already have
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Company numbers
Company numbers
Already zero-padded to 8 digits — joins directly to Companies House company data and accounts
How to get it
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Bulk download
PSC data snapshot — Companies House
No account needed. A daily whole-register snapshot as one large file (over 2 GB compressed, one record per line). Best read straight from the download without unpacking it in full.
What's involved in using it
- It is a single very large file — over 2 GB compressed and far bigger once opened — holding more than 15 million records, one per line. It is built to be streamed through by software, not opened in a spreadsheet.
- Ownership can run company-to-company, so finding the real person in control often means following a chain of links rather than reading a single row.
- The file is replaced each day under a dated name, so keeping it current means re-fetching the latest version rather than refreshing in place.
Worth knowing before you start
- Not every company has a named controller here. Some carry only a statement explaining why, and some legitimately have none — absence is not proof there is no owner.
- Dates of birth are month and year only, and a small number of protected identities are withheld entirely, by design.
- An owner can itself be another company, so tracing the ultimate individual means following parent company numbers back through the register.
- The file is very large — over 2 GB compressed and far bigger unpacked. It is built for streaming, not for opening in a spreadsheet.
- It is a beneficial-ownership record, not a shareholder list — control can arise from voting rights or influence, not just shares.
Ask us about Persons with Significant Control (PSC)
Ask a factual question about Persons with Significant Control (PSC) — what it covers, how often it changes, whether it matches the records you keep — and we will answer, free. Or tell us what you are trying to work out, and we will tell you what it would take to get this data working next to the numbers you already have.