Companies House sends free email alerts through a service called Follow. Once you follow a company, you get an email each time Companies House accepts a filing for it. It is a good way to see accounts, director changes and insolvency documents as they reach the register. What it cannot do is tell you about something that has not been filed, and for a credit controller that is often the part that matters.
How to set up Companies House alerts
- Go to the Companies House "Find and update company information" service and sign in, or register with an email address and a password. Searching the register needs no account; following a company does.
- Search for the company by name or company number and open its page.
- Select "Follow this company".
The service is free. Repeat the steps for each company you want to follow.
What a Follow alert tells you
Each alert says what has been filed, as soon as Companies House has accepted it, with a link to the company's filing history where the document can be downloaded for free. You also get an alert when a filing is removed from the register. That covers anything that is filed: annual accounts, a confirmation statement, a director appointed or resigning, a change of registered office, and the forms an insolvency practitioner files once a company is in administration or liquidation.
What Follow cannot tell you
- A filing that is missing. When a company's accounts or confirmation statement go overdue, nothing is filed, so nothing is sent. Overdue filings are one of the earliest signs that a company is in trouble, and one of the usual triggers for a compulsory strike-off.
- A winding-up petition. A petition is a court document, advertised in The Gazette, not a filing at Companies House. A winding-up petition, often the earliest warning, is advertised in The Gazette but rarely reaches Companies House: of 50 petitioned companies we checked, 5 had any filing there.
- The first notice of an insolvency. We compared 216 companies (September to October 2026): The Gazette published the insolvency first in 161, a median of 8 days before it reached Companies House. Companies House was first in 52, mostly court winding-up orders.
- A customer list. You follow companies one at a time, from each company's own page. There is no upload of a ledger or a list of company numbers.
Where Follow is enough
For a handful of companies you want to keep an eye on, and where a few days' delay does not cost you money, Follow is free and worth switching on. It is also a useful backstop next to any other source, because every alert links to the document itself.
Alerts on what is missing, not only what is filed
InsolvencyRadar watches the official insolvency record and Companies House together. For every company on your watchlist you get an email and a webhook the day a winding-up petition, administration or liquidation notice appears in The Gazette. For UK companies it also re-reads Companies House at least weekly and sends a warning when accounts or a confirmation statement go overdue, a strike-off is proposed, a director resigns, an owner steps down or the status changes. A whole customer list goes in as one CSV upload. Plans start at €19 a month for 250 companies: see insolvency alerts, or check a company for free first.
General information about the law of England and Wales, not legal advice. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules for some of these steps.