Guides / Selling to new venues / 3 min
Reading a Companies House record for a new operator
What Companies House shows for free about the company behind a new venue, and how to tell a first-time operator from an established one.
Published
Where a premises licence application is made by a company, that company has a public record at Companies House. It is free to search, and a few minutes with it tells you who you are dealing with.
What you can see for free
- The registered address and the date of incorporation.
- Current and resigned officers.
- Images of the documents the company has filed.
- Charges, previous company names and insolvency information.
You can also set up a free email alert that tells you when a company updates its details.
What to look for
- The incorporation date. A company formed in the last few months is very likely a new operator, setting everything up for the first time.
- The registered address. If it is the venue itself, the people running the business are probably on site. If it is an office elsewhere, decisions may be made elsewhere too.
- The nature of business code. 56101 is licensed restaurants, 56302 is public houses and bars, 56103 is take-away food shops and 55100 is hotels.
CiviFlow does this lookup for every company applicant and shows the company number, the incorporation date and whether the company is registered at the premises. Officers’ names are not shown in our lists.