How to Find a Company's Directors
Every active limited company in the UK must tell Companies House who runs it. That means the names of a company's directors are part of the public record — free for anyone to look up. This guide explains exactly what the register reveals, how to find the right people quickly, and how to read what you find.
What the public register actually shows
When a company is incorporated, it files details of its officers with Companies House. By law these are open to the public, so you do not need an account, a subscription or a reason to search. For each director you can typically see their full name, year and month of birth, nationality, country of residence, occupation, role and the date they were appointed.
You will also see a service address rather than a home address. Since 2018, directors have been able to keep their residential address off the public record, so the address shown is usually the registered office or a correspondence address. The register covers directors, company secretaries and, for some firms, LLP members — collectively known as "officers".
Finding directors on Companies House (and faster on BizLookup)
The official route is the Companies House register: search for the company by name or number, open its record, and click through to the "People" or "Officers" tab. It is comprehensive but the interface can be slow to navigate, especially if you only know roughly what the business is called.
BizLookup pulls from the same underlying Companies House data and makes it quicker to work with. Just search for a company on BizLookup and you will see its officers listed instantly on the company page, alongside status, registered address and filing history — no clicking through multiple tabs. If you are not sure of the exact legal name, partial searches still surface the right match.
Current vs resigned officers
One of the most common mistakes is assuming everyone listed is still involved. The register keeps a full history, so it shows both serving directors and those who have resigned. Resigned officers are clearly flagged with a resignation date, while current directors show only an appointment date.
This history is genuinely useful. If you are checking who was in charge when a particular contract was signed or a problem arose, you can match the dates of appointment and resignation against the period you care about. Always confirm whether a named person is a current officer before you rely on it for due diligence or correspondence.
Persons with significant control (PSC)
Directors run a company day to day, but they are not always the people who own or control it. That is where the PSC register comes in. Since 2016, companies have had to declare their persons with significant control — broadly, anyone who holds more than 25% of the shares or voting rights, or who otherwise has significant influence over the business.
The PSC entry sits alongside the officers on the same record and shows the nature of each person's control. Checking it tells you whether the director you are looking at is also a major owner, or whether real control sits with someone behind the scenes. For a fuller walk-through of vetting a business, see our guide on how to check a company.
Checking a director's other companies
Once you have found a director, you can pivot to see every other company they are or have been an officer of. Because directors are recorded as individuals, the register links their appointments across different businesses. This lets you spot whether someone runs a portfolio of healthy companies or has a trail of dissolved firms behind them.
It is a quick way to gauge experience and risk. A pattern of recently dissolved companies, or several firms registered to the same address, can be worth a closer look before you sign anything. If you want to understand what directors are actually accountable for, read our guide on director responsibilities.
Why you would want to find a company's directors
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to look up directors. You might be vetting a potential supplier or customer, carrying out know-your-customer checks, chasing an unpaid invoice and needing the right name to write to, researching a competitor, or simply confirming that the person you are dealing with really is who they claim to be.
For sales and research teams, this data is also a way to build targeted prospect lists by role, sector or location. If that is your goal, our lead lists turn the same Companies House data into ready-to-use contact lists. Either way, knowing who sits behind a company name is the first step to dealing with it confidently.