UK Business Address Requirements: What Companies House Actually Needs

Every UK limited company must register an official address with Companies House, and since 4 March 2024 that address has to be an “appropriate address,” not just any postal address. If you are weighing a registered office address in London against your current lease, coworking membership, or a friend’s spare room, this one rule decides what will and will not pass.

This article covers what Companies House actually requires, what it does not allow, and what happens if your address stops qualifying. It does not cover how to form a company, what a virtual office is, or how much London workspace costs – those are different questions with their own answers elsewhere on this site.

What “appropriate address” means under the current Companies House rules

An address only counts as an appropriate address if two conditions hold: in the ordinary course of events, a document delivered there would be expected to come to the attention of someone acting on behalf of the company, and delivery there can be confirmed by an acknowledgement of delivery (GOV.UK, checked August 2026). In plain terms, someone has to actually be there to receive your post and be able to confirm they got it. A registered office address in London that nobody ever visits, or that has no one authorised to accept company mail, does not meet this test even if it is a genuine physical building.

This is a change from the old rule, which only required a physical UK address without testing whether anyone there would actually see the post. Companies House has been actively using its expanded powers to query and change addresses that do not meet the test since the rule took effect, so an address that worked before March 2024 is not automatically safe today.

Your registered office must sit in the right UK jurisdiction

Your registered office address has to be in the same part of the UK where your company is registered – a company registered in Scotland needs a Scottish registered office, and the same applies to England and Wales, and to Northern Ireland (GOV.UK). This trips people up more often than the appropriate-address test itself: a founder incorporates in England and Wales, then later takes a desk in Edinburgh or Belfast and assumes they can simply update the address. You can, but only by following the formal change process below – and if you want to actually re-register the company in a different jurisdiction rather than just move the address, that is a different and more involved process than filing AD01.

Physical delivery and acknowledgement: the practical test behind the rule

The “acknowledgement of delivery” half of the appropriate-address test is easy to miss but matters in practice. Companies House is not asking whether your address looks legitimate on paper – it is asking whether a sender could get confirmation that their post arrived. A staffed reception that signs for post, or a mailroom that logs incoming mail, satisfies this. An empty office, a locked unit nobody checks, or a forwarding-only box does not, regardless of how official the building looks from the street.

Your registered office address is public – what that means

Companies House has a statutory duty to make your registered office address available to the public, and it appears on the free company search the moment your incorporation or change is filed (GOV.UK). Anyone – a customer, a competitor, an unhappy supplier, a stranger – can look it up for free. This is different from your director’s service address, which is also public but can be anywhere in the world and does not have to relate to where the company operates, and different again from your residential address, which stays on a private register unless you also use it as your service address or registered office.

PO Boxes and mail-forwarding-only services are not allowed

You can no longer use a Royal Mail PO Box as your registered office address, and the same restriction extends to similar mail-forwarding-only services from other providers (GOV.UK). The underlying issue is the appropriate-address test again: a box or a forwarding address, on its own, has nobody physically present who can receive post and confirm delivery. If a provider offers you “a registered office address” that is really just a forwarding service with no staffed location behind it, it will not satisfy Companies House even if it comes with a smart-looking postcode.

Can you use your home address as your registered office?

Yes, it is legally permitted – there is no rule against it. The catch is the same visibility rule covered above: if you do not want an address to be publicly available, you should not use it as your company’s registered office (GOV.UK). Plenty of sole directors do use their home address when starting out, particularly before they have a physical workspace, but it means anyone can look up where you live through the free Companies House search. Many founders who work from home instead use a different address as their registered office, and keep their home address on file only as the private residential address.

Registered office vs director’s service address vs residential address vs trading address

These four terms get used interchangeably in everyday conversation, but Companies House treats them as genuinely different things.

Address type	Public?	What it is for	Location rule
Registered office	Yes, always	The company’s official legal address; statutory mail and legal notices go here	Must be in the company’s UK jurisdiction
Director’s service address	Yes, always	Correspondence address for a named director or officer	Can be anywhere in the world
Residential address	No – private register	The director’s actual home, held on file for identification	Not applicable
Trading/business address	Not filed with Companies House	Where the business actually operates day to day	Not a statutory filing at all

A company does not have to trade from its registered office, and none of its directors need to be based there. It is entirely normal for a company’s registered office, its directors’ service addresses, and the place customers actually deal with it to be three different locations.

Can a coworking space or serviced office be used as a registered office?

Occupying a desk in a coworking space or a room in a serviced office does not automatically make that address usable as your registered office. Two separate things both have to be true: the workspace provider has to explicitly permit registered-office use under your membership or licence agreement, and the address itself still has to pass the appropriate-address test above, meaning someone there can actually receive your post and confirm delivery. Some operators offer this as a named, deliberate service with mail handling built in; plenty of others do not, especially on flexible desk-only memberships where nobody is contractually responsible for your post. Before you sign anything, read the agreement rather than assuming – our serviced office agreement checklist for London covers exactly what to check before you commit.

Finding a workspace through myHQ does not mean that registered-office use or mail handling is included automatically. If you want to use the workspace as your company’s registered office, ask the operator whether this is permitted under your agreement and confirm that the address meets Companies House requirements before filing it..

How to change your registered office address

You change your registered office address by filing form AD01 with Companies House, and you must do this within 14 days of the change actually taking place (GOV.UK). The new address has to meet the same appropriate-address test as any registered office, and it has to stay within the same UK jurisdiction your company was originally registered in. Moving desks within the same building, switching coworking providers, or ending a serviced office agreement does not update your Companies House record on its own – you have to file the change yourself, and until you do, official post keeps going to the old address.

What happens if Companies House decides your address is not appropriate

Companies House can act on its own initiative, not just on a complaint from someone else, to move a company’s registered office to a Companies House default address if it decides the current one does not meet the appropriate-address rules (GOV.UK). It can do this immediately, or give the company 14 days to object first. Once an address is moved to the default address, certain legal duties of the company are suspended for 28 days while the company sorts out a proper replacement.

If the company still has not provided an acceptable address by the end of that window, Companies House can publish a strike-off notice in the relevant Gazette. From the date of that notice, the company has a further two months to respond before Companies House strikes it off the register and dissolves it. In practice this means an inappropriate registered office is not a paperwork technicality – left unresolved, it can end with the company being legally dissolved.

Next steps

Before filing an address with Companies House, check it against the appropriate-address test: can someone acting for the company receive the post, and can the sender obtain confirmation of delivery? If you are still deciding how to structure the business, read our guide to sole trader vs limited company structures in the UK. Teams comparing flexible workspace options can also read our guide to coworking for small teams in London.

A workspace address can only be used as a registered office when the provider permits it and the address meets Companies House requirements. myHQ does not provide registered-office or mail-handling services. If your team also needs a place to work, you can explore coworking and office space across London.

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