I registered my company with my home address. Whoops. Here's what Companies House shows the world about you

When I set up my limited company, I put my home address on the form and didn't think about it again. Nobody mentioned it might matter. I just wanted the paperwork done so I could start working.

What I didn't realise is that the address goes straight onto the public register at Companies House, searchable by anyone, for free, forever. A few months in, the junk mail started. Then the odd cold caller asking for "the owner." Nothing dramatic, but enough to make me wish someone had mentioned it before I filled in the form.

Why this is worth thinking about now

Companies House has confirmed it removed 151,000 company addresses from the public register since March 2024, specifically to protect people from identity hijacking. Nearly 4 million directors have now completed mandatory identity verification under rules designed to make the register harder to abuse. Andy King, Chief Executive of Companies House, has described it as moving "from a passive register" to "a trusted guardian of critical data."

None of that means Companies House is coming for you. But it does mean the register is being taken far more seriously than it used to be, tied more closely to real, verified identities, and more actively policed. Given that, it felt like a good moment to actually check what's public about you, and to hear how other contractors made this decision when they set up.

What’s actually public

Every director's details go on public record the moment a company is incorporated. There are two addresses involved, a service address, which is what people see when they look your company up, and a residential address, which normally stays private.

The catch is that if you use your home address as your company's registered office, the two become the same thing, and your home address is now the one on public display. It's a detail that's easy to miss when you're setting up, because nothing in the process makes it obvious.

How everyone else made the call

I put the question to a few freelancer groups and to a ContractorUK-adjacent Reddit thread, and the split was clear. Most people who'd thought about it at all had moved away from using their home address. Plenty of others had simply never realised there was a decision to make.

Graham Nicholson, business owner who set up G Forex, used his accountant's address from the start, on his accountant's advice. "If you have a healthy set of good accounts and people know you have money, having your personal address available to everybody on Companies House is not a wise business move, as they know where you live. My accountancy firm said I could use their head office address, keeping my personal information private. I felt much safer."

Helen Moore, Director of Albadore Bishop Ltd, made a similar decision, for a different reason. Working from France, her accountant's address was the practical option, but she'd point most people toward one anyway. She said, "Company addresses are in the public domain via the Companies House website, and I didn't want personal details available. I'd definitely recommend people use a registered address, just more professional and secure all round. I've also known people who owed Corporation Tax have HMRC debt collectors knocking on the door at 7am."

Not everyone had it so straightforward. Another contractor I spoke to set her company up in Wales and has since moved twice. "I'm now in Scotland and have a London address listed, because I can't use a Scottish one. Then there's a separate address for correspondence on top of that. It's a nightmare. And because it's all listed on Companies House, I get endless junk mail to both addresses."

What Reddit had to say

I put the same question to r/ContractorUK: had I made a mistake registering with my home address? The poll leaned firmly one way, more than twice as many respondents had used a registered or virtual office over their home address.

The comments were split between reassurance and warning. Several people said it's common and not worth worrying about. Others weren't so relaxed. One contractor had their identity stolen after using their home address, including a credit account opened in their company's name. Another mentioned their company name showing up on Google Maps attached to their house, which is apparently slow to get removed.

The advice that came up repeatedly was that you can change your registered address at any time, most people won't go back and check your old one, and using an accountant's address or a registered office service is usually inexpensive.

The simpler option

This is where a registered office address makes sense. Rather than using your home address and hoping nobody looks too closely, or trying to get it removed after the fact (which Companies House won't do while it's still your active registered office), a registered address means your home was never on the public record to begin with.

If you've already registered with your home address, you're not stuck. You can apply to Companies House to have it removed from the public register, provided you've since changed your registered office to something else. It's not instant, and it involves a formal application rather than a quick edit, but it's a fixable problem, not a permanent one.

I spoke to Joe Murray, Director at DeskMate, who sees this play out with contractors regularly. "Many contractors and small business owners get started and don't realise that their personal address is made public when attached to their business. For some it poses no risk, maybe just some junk mail, but for others there can be more serious problems. Keeping your home address separate from your business address allows you to protect your privacy and keep the two areas of your life separate. What many people don't realise is that you don't have to commit to a long term, expensive office space rental in order to do this, and that's what we're trying to help with."

Would I change it now?

Yes. Nothing serious happened to me, it's junk mail and one odd phone call, but nothing super weird or all that annoying. I just didn't know there was a choice when I was starting out.

If you're setting up now, or you've been trading for years and never checked what Companies House shows against your name, it's worth five minutes to look. You might land on the same answer you already have. But it'll be one you picked, not one you fell into.