The record
Since the regime took effect, a UK company must identify anyone who is a person with significant control, a PSC, and file that person's details at Companies House. Companies House's own PSC guidance states a PSC is usually anyone who has more than 25% shares or voting rights, can appoint or remove a majority of directors, or can influence or control the company. The statutory version of the same test sits in Schedule 1A to the Companies Act 2006, which sets out five specific conditions, including holding more than 25% of the shares or more than 25% of the voting rights, and a residual condition for someone who has the right to exercise, or actually exercises, significant influence or control.
A company must record which condition each PSC meets, alongside identifying details, and file changes within 14 days; a company with no PSC must say so.
What the documents establish
The guidance and the schedule both describe a test built on stated thresholds and rights, not independent verification of who actually holds shares or exercises control. A PSC filing is the company's own account of who meets the statutory conditions; Companies House does not trace share registers or investigate control arrangements to confirm it. Since identity verification became a live requirement, a named PSC must additionally verify their own identity and supply a personal code, but that verifies the person is who they say they are, not that the underlying claim is accurate.
The schedule's five conditions are also not equally common: the 25% shareholding and voting-rights tests capture most cases, while significant-influence-or-control is a residual test meant to catch control exercised outside share ownership, such as through a shareholders' agreement.
The operating read
Editorially, a founder or investor reading a company's PSC register should treat it as a disclosure obligation the company assessed itself against, not a verified beneficial-ownership register in the way a bank's own due diligence file might be. Two companies with identical share registers can report different PSCs if their shareholders' agreements assign control differently, so a PSC filing alone will not reconstruct an accurate cap table. A missing or no-PSC filing on a company with a plain controlling shareholder is worth querying directly rather than assuming the register is complete.
What to check before you decide
Before relying on a company's PSC filing for anything beyond confirming what the company itself has disclosed, check the following.
- Does the PSC filing name a person who matches your own understanding of who controls the company, and if not, has a change simply not been filed yet?
- Which of the statutory conditions does the filing say each PSC meets, and does a shareholders' agreement or side letter suggest a different picture?
- Has the named PSC completed the identity verification Companies House now requires, and does that timeline match the company's own confirmation statement date?
A PSC filing records a company's own answer to a statutory test, checked for identity but not for accuracy of the underlying claim. Treat it as a starting point for a control question, not the final word.
Sources & their limits
These are the existing record’s sources and retrieval dates, preserved from the archive. Source statements, historical events and editorial interpretation are distinct.
- People with significant control (PSCs)
Companies House's own plain-English statement of the nature-of-control conditions and the company's obligations to identify, record and file PSC details.
- Companies Act 2006, Schedule 1A: Persons with significant control over a company
The statutory five conditions for significant control that the guidance's plain-English summary is based on.