How to change your UK company's registered office address

Your UK company's registered office address is the official address that Companies House uses to send all statutory correspondence — late filing warnings, compliance notices, and penalty letters. If it is wrong, or if no one is monitoring it, you can miss critical communications and accumulate penalties without ever knowing.

To change the registered office address, you file form AD01 with Companies House — either online through the Companies House WebFiling portal or by post. The change takes effect once it appears on the public register, typically the same day for online filings.

There is one important restriction: the new registered office must be in the same country as the current one. If your company is registered in England and Wales, the new address must also be in England and Wales. You cannot move a company registered in England to Scotland by changing the address.

Why does this come up so often? The most common trigger is switching accountants or compliance providers. If your previous provider's address was your registered office — which is common — you need to change it to your new provider's address before you stop using the old one. Failing to do so means your official correspondence still goes to an address that is no longer monitoring it for you.

The second most common trigger is a mail-forwarding service. A registered office address is not just any address — it must be a physical address (not a PO Box) where documents can be legally served during business hours. Virtual office services that provide a registered office must fulfil certain legal requirements under the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015.

Fileminder provides a London registered office address (Kilburn, NW6) with mail scanning and forwarding as a standalone service. If you switch to us, we file the AD01 as part of the service setup.