Questions, answered honestly.

Most applications we submit on a working day are approved by Companies House within 3 to 24 hours. It is not instant and anyone promising you otherwise is describing a best case as a rule.

Three things slow it down: a company name that clashes with an existing name or contains a sensitive word, a director whose identity verification has not completed, and applications submitted late on a Friday. Companies House does not process applications overnight or at weekends for the standard service.

If you genuinely need it today, our Same-Day Formation add-on prioritises the application for £99 (we fast-track the identity and anti-money-laundering checks and the filing), plus Companies House’s £56 same-day supplement on top of the standard £100 filing fee – £156 of government fees in total, every penny paid straight to Companies House. Companies House cuts off at 3pm, so we ask for same-day orders by 12pm (midday) to leave room for identity and anti-money-laundering checks, and we will tell you honestly if you have missed it rather than take the money.

It is the Companies House incorporation fee. It is set by the government, it went up to £100 for digital incorporation on 1 February 2026, and every single provider pays exactly the same amount.

We show it separately and pass it through with nothing added, so you can always see what is ours and what is the government’s.

We add nothing to it. If Companies House changes the fee, your price changes by exactly that amount and nothing else.

Less than most people expect. You will need:

• Three company name options, in case your first choice is taken
• The name, date of birth, nationality and home address of every director and person with significant control – the home address is not published, it is held privately by Companies House
• A rough share structure (for most one-person companies this is 100 ordinary £1 shares)
• A SIC code describing what the business does – we will help you pick one
• Photo ID for each director, for the identity verification

You do not need a business bank account, a UK address of your own, a UK passport, or an accountant.

Included, for up to four directors, in every formation package. We are a Companies House Authorised Corporate Service Provider (AP021384), so we perform the verification ourselves and your personal Companies House code is issued through us.

additional directors beyond four are £149.99 each and we confirm the number with you before charging anything.

We run the checks ourselves – passport chip and likeness, from your phone – rather than handing them to a third party, and there is no hourly fee if a case needs a person.

You can, and it is legal. But understand what it means: Companies House publishes the registered office and every director's service address, the register is free to search, and search engines index it. It reaches credit reference agencies, marketing list brokers and anyone who looks up your company.

Undoing it later is the problem. Since 27 January 2025 you can apply to suppress a home address previously used as a registered office, and since 21 July 2025 to suppress residential addresses elsewhere on the register – but it is an application, per document, with a fee, and some things cannot be removed at all.

A registered office and a director service address are included in every formation package. That is why we include them rather than sell them as an upgrade.

A Standard Industrial Classification code describes your main activity. You give at least one at incorporation and confirm it on every confirmation statement.

It matters more than people think: banks look at it during onboarding, and a code that does not match what you actually do is a common reason applications get referred for manual review. Some codes also sit in higher-risk categories for banking and payment processing.

We will suggest one based on what you tell us the business does, and if you are between two we will explain the difference rather than guess.

Yes. A change of name costs £20 filed digitally, £30 on paper or £85 same-day, paid to Companies House. Your company number never changes, which is what banks and HMRC actually key on.

What it does affect: your bank will want the change reflected before it updates the account name, and anything printed or contracted under the old name needs revisiting. It costs little to do and is mildly tedious to tidy up.

As soon as Companies House approves the application, your dashboard holds the certificate of incorporation, the memorandum and articles of association, the share certificates, the statutory registers and your company authentication code.

They are digital, searchable and permanent – we do not charge you to download your own documents, and we do not charge a fee to re-issue them if you lose them.

If you want a printed and posted certificate pack, that is a £19.99 add-on. Most people never need it; banks and accountants accept the digital version.

The Postcode Address File is Royal Mail's national database of every deliverable address in the UK. It is what banks, HMRC, Companies House, credit reference agencies and delivery networks check an address against.

We worked with the local council and Royal Mail to register each of our three buildings individually – The Courtyard, The Annexe and The Exchange each hold their own listing. So when you type your Vaulex Group postcode into a bank onboarding form, your building appears in the dropdown and verifies first time.

An address that exists only on a provider's website can fail those checks, and a failed address check is one of the most common reasons a business bank application gets pushed into manual review.

It is sorted, opened, scanned and OCR-indexed on our automated line, and it is in your dashboard as a searchable PDF by the next working day – usually within a couple of hours. You get an email telling you it has arrived.

The original is held securely for 90 days. You can ask for it at any point in that window; after 90 days it is securely destroyed unless your plan says otherwise.

There is no charge for any of that, on any plan, however many letters arrive.

There is genuinely no scanning charge, and the reason is structural rather than generous.

Our scanning is a purpose-built automated line – opened, scanned and indexed in one pass, no admin team pushing paper around – and occupancy at each building is strictly capped, so daily post volume is predictable. The true marginal cost of scanning one more letter is pennies.

Charging per letter for a process a computer performs is not cost recovery. It is a hidden fee, and we will not levy one.

Ask from your dashboard. You pay the actual postage at cost plus a flat £1.25 handling fee, and both are shown to you before we send – not deducted from a deposit you topped up months ago.

That covers anything you need in original form: bank cards, cheque books, certificates, anything with a wet signature.

If you would rather not decide letter by letter, Consolidated Forwarding at £9.99 a month batches everything into one monthly send with one postage charge.

Yes – parcel receiving is included on every plan, with no monthly fee and no admin fee. We sign for parcels up to 9kg and hold them securely for collection or onward dispatch.

We do not accept anything hazardous, perishable, live, or prohibited by our carriers, and we cannot act as a fulfilment warehouse – this is a business address with a secure parcel service, not a 3PL.

Onward courier dispatch is £14.99 per dispatch, tracked door to door.

Into seven folders, filled for you as each letter is scanned: HMRC, Companies House, Government & regulators, Bank & finance, Business, Personal and Junk. Statutory post is flagged on arrival.

Every scan is a searchable PDF, and “Explain this letter” will tell you in plain English what any of it means. The whole picture is on the Mailroom page.

Yes. Add a login for them from your Team page and choose the folders – the HMRC folder, typically. They sign in to a Mailroom that shows those folders and nothing else, read-only, and they are emailed when something lands.

Every open is on the audit trail; remove or change the access whenever you like and it takes effect at once.

That month’s 2-Hour Priority fee is refunded – not a credit note. The clock on each item runs from the arrival time at the building, so you can see it.

We hold it and tell you the same day; dispatch is quoted before it goes. Anything hazardous, perishable or unsafe to hold is refused and you are told why.

The mailroom team who open and scan it, and whoever is handling a request you raised. Identity documents are kept apart, visible only to our compliance reviewer, and every open – theirs included – is logged.

Your building is set when you order and stays your registered address for the life of your subscription. We strictly cap occupancy at every building – a named building on a real site, never a mailbox shared with thousands.

Your plan comes with a building: Privacy Core and E-Commerce Hub live at The Courtyard; Business Pro at The Annexe; Business in a Box at The Exchange – the Switch plans follow the plan they match, and the building that comes with your plan never costs extra. Want a different one, for branding or any other reason? A building higher up costs the difference – The Annexe is £5 a month more than The Courtyard, and The Exchange £10 more – and a lower one costs nothing extra. Moving an existing company to us? You choose the building as you order. Forming a new company? Ask after you join and we will move you on the same terms.

One thing we will not do is tell you your address is simply "Vaulex House" and leave it vague. Your address is a specific named building on the site, because that is what appears on the PAF and that is what the bank checks.

In our experience the address is rarely the problem when the address is PAF-listed, the company details match, and the SIC code matches what you actually do.

We will be straight with you: no provider can guarantee a bank's decision, and anyone who does is overselling. Banks decline for reasons that have nothing to do with your address – sector, credit file, source of funds, the applicant's own history.

What we can say is that our address clears the automated address check, and that we can make a business bank introduction from your dashboard once the company exists.

No, and this is where a lot of providers are vague. This is a registered office, service address and trading address – not premises you occupy.

You may not hold yourself out as occupying the building or having staff there, and you may not invite clients or couriers to attend in person without a prior arrangement with us. Parcels are only accepted where your plan includes parcel receiving.

We say it plainly because the alternative is a customer discovering the limit at the worst possible moment.

No – and neither can any registered office or virtual office address, whichever provider you use. Google’s own guidelines say a business that rents a mailing address but does not operate from it (a virtual office) is not eligible for a Business Profile, and a shared or serviced office only qualifies if it is staffed during business hours by your own people. Most providers simply do not mention this.

Your Vaulex House address is your registered office, service address and trading address for Companies House, HMRC, banks, suppliers and customers. For Google, list the premises you genuinely work from – or, if you are fully remote, set the profile up as a service-area business without a public address.

Every company director and every person with significant control. For LLPs it is all members, not just designated members.

New directors verify before incorporation or before accepting appointment. People already in post are covered by a twelve-month transition that began on 18 November 2025 and closes in mid-November 2026, with existing directors confirming through their next confirmation statement.

PSCs who are not directors have their own window: 14 days starting the first day of their birth month. A PSC who is also a director gets 14 days from the day after the company's confirmation statement date. These are easy to miss and we track them for you.

It is an offence. Companies House can impose a financial penalty, filings can be restricted, and – the part people care about most – a note appears against the individual's name on the public register saying they have not verified.

A 14-day extension can be requested, but only before the deadline passes, not after.

There are exactly two official routes and they are not equal.

GOV.UK One Login is free and works well if you hold a UK biometric passport, a UK photo driving licence or a BRP, and have a UK footprint. You do it yourself through the app, online questions, or in person at a Post Office.

An Authorised Corporate Service Provider – that is us, AP021384 – verifies you directly. It is the route the official guidance points to when One Login does not work, and it works from outside the UK. We may charge for it; One Login does not.

We will tell you honestly which route suits you. If One Login will work for you and you want to save the money, use it.

Yes, and without a notary, an embassy appointment or legalised documents. We read the chip in your passport, match your face against it and screen you against sanctions and PEP lists – all from your phone, usually the same day.

This is exactly the case the ACSP route exists for, because the One Login route is frequently a dead end without UK-issued ID.

The dedicated verification is £149 flat, the same in Dubai or Sydney as in the UK. We publish country guides for Dubai and the UAE, Spain, Portugal and Australia.

It is a private code confirming your identity has been verified. It is yours, not ours – it is not published on the register, it stays with you across every company you are ever appointed to, and you may share it with any agent or accountant who files on your behalf.

Keep it secure. If it is compromised it can be replaced.

Some agents treat the code as leverage to keep you. Ours is issued to you and travels with you whether you stay with us or not.

Identity checks to the Companies House standard: the chip in your identity document is read electronically, your face is matched against the image on the document, and you are screened against sanctions, politically exposed person and adverse media lists.

Documents are encrypted in transit and at rest and access is restricted and logged. Card payments never touch our servers – they are handled by a PCI DSS Level 1 processor.

One honest limitation: we are required to keep identity records for seven years after our relationship ends, and that obligation overrides a deletion request. Our Privacy Policy sets out exactly what that means.

The app is built for one narrow path: a recent UK passport with a readable chip, a modern phone, good lighting and a settled UK address history. The failures people tell us about most are the passport chip not reading, the likeness check rejecting an old photo or poor light, no UK records to match against after time abroad, documents the app does not support, and name or address mismatches between documents. Then the loop of “try again”.

The law provides exactly one alternative: verification through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider. We are one, so we can verify you ourselves and confirm it to Companies House.

Both, deliberately. Chip-and-likeness technology handles the routine majority in minutes – passport chip read, liveness and likeness matching, sanctions and PEP screening. Anything the technology cannot resolve goes to an ICA-qualified anti-money-laundering specialist, who can handle foreign documents, name changes and gaps, and will speak to you by phone or video if a check needs it. You get a clear decision and, if anything is missing, exactly what to send.

In the first year, these are the ones that bite:

• Corporation Tax registration – tell HMRC the company is active within 3 months of starting to trade
• First confirmation statement – 12 months from incorporation, with a 14-day filing window
• First accounts to Companies House – 21 months from the date of incorporation
• Corporation Tax payment – 9 months and 1 day after the accounting period ends
• Company Tax Return – 12 months after the accounting period ends
• Identity verification windows for every director and PSC

We track all of these and tell you before they matter. That is included, not an add-on.

The Companies House fee is £50 filed digitally (it rose from £34 on 1 February 2026), £110 on paper, once per twelve-month payment period.

It confirms your directors, secretaries, PSCs, registered office, registered email address and lawful purpose statement – and now the identity verification position for directors and PSCs too. It is a confirmation, not an update: changes have to be filed separately.

Miss it and you face a financial penalty and, eventually, strike-off. Our filing service is £74.99 including the £50 fee.

Companies House penalties for a private company are automatic and escalate: £150 up to a month late, £375 one to three months, £750 three to six months, £1,500 more than six months. They double if you file late two years running.

This is why deadline tracking is included on every plan rather than sold as an extra – and why our guarantee says that if we miss a deadline we told you in writing we were tracking, we pay the penalty.

Registration is compulsory once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling twelve-month period – not your financial year, a rolling twelve months. You then have 30 days from the end of that month to register.

There is a second trigger people miss: if you expect to exceed £90,000 in the next 30 days alone, you must register by the end of that 30-day period, and the effective date is the date you realised, not the date turnover crossed.

If your business is based outside the UK and supplies goods or services here, there is no threshold at all – you register regardless of turnover.

Before the first payday, if anyone is paid £96 a week or more, receives expenses or benefits, has another job, or receives a pension. That includes a sole director paying themselves a salary.

You cannot register more than two months in advance, and even below the threshold you must still keep payroll records.

New employers also have pensions duties to the Pensions Regulator shortly after the first payroll submission.

Almost certainly, if you hold personal data about customers or staff – a mailing list, a CRM, orders with names and addresses all count.

The fee is £52 a year at Tier 1 (turnover up to £632,000 or no more than 10 staff), £78 at Tier 2, and there is a £5 discount for direct debit. The maximum penalty for not paying is £4,350.

Our ICO registration service is £79.99 including the £52 fee. There are exemptions, and the ICO's own self-assessment will tell you if you qualify – we would rather you checked than paid us unnecessarily.

No, and we will not pretend otherwise. Vaulex Group is not a firm of accountants, solicitors or tax advisers and nothing on this site is advice.

Where a service is described as accountant-checked, a qualified accountant reviews the application for completeness and plausibility before submission. That is a review of the filing, not advice to you, and it does not create a relationship between you and the reviewer.

For anything involving schemes, group structures, property, partial exemption or anything overseas-facing, you need a proper adviser – and we will tell you that rather than take the fee.

Because a provider holding twelve months of your money has already been paid, whatever happens next. A provider billing monthly has to be worth paying again in thirty days.

Most registered office services in the UK are sold as an annual fee, and there is nothing dishonest about that – it is advertised as annual. It does mean the renewal is where an annual provider makes its margin, and that "free" mail handling usually covers statutory post only.

We charge your first month, then the same amount monthly, with every letter scanned and no meter. You can stop whenever you like.

Yes. Pay yearly and you get two months free – ten months’ price for twelve – on every plan, and the same price at every renewal. Monthly stays the default; the choice is on the order form.

Cancel a yearly plan part-way and the unused full months are refunded; the months you used are charged at the monthly price.

No. One set monthly fee – the price you join on is the price you stay on. No introductory rate, no renewal step-up, no escalator clause, no "deemed renewal".

The single exception is a statutory fee changing – if Companies House or the ICO change what they charge, we pass on that change exactly and nothing else, and we tell you before it happens.

This is written into our Terms of Service, not just promised on a marketing page.

No. Vaulex Group Ltd is not currently registered for VAT, so the price you see is the price you pay. If we become VAT registered we will tell you in advance rather than let it appear at checkout.

The price on the card is the whole price.

Card, taken at checkout and then monthly. Payments are processed by Stripe, a PCI DSS Level 1 provider – card details never reach our servers and we never see or store a full card number.

We do not ask for card details by email or over the phone. If anyone claiming to be us ever does, it is not us.

Yes. Monthly rolling, cancel from your dashboard, no notice period and no exit fee. Your service runs to the end of the month you have paid for.

Before you go, you must move your registered office and any service address away from our address – and we will normally file that change for you as part of leaving, included rather than charged. The legal duty to hold an appropriate registered office sits with the company, and a company left without one can be struck off.

Full detail is in our Cancellation and Refunds policy.

Anything not yet done. A formation not yet submitted is fully refunded including the Companies House fee. An address subscription unused within 14 days is fully refunded.

What is not refundable is work already performed and money already paid to the government: once a company exists it cannot be un-formed, and once an identity check has run it has been paid for whatever the outcome.

If Companies House rejects an application we prepared, you get your money back.

Download anything you need before you cancel. Scanned mail stays available for 12 months after cancellation, then is deleted. Physical mail held at the time is available for 30 days for collection or forwarding at our published rates, then securely destroyed.

After your subscription ends we return post to sender. We do not forward indefinitely, and continuing to use the address without a subscription is a breach we may report to Companies House.

Identity and AML records we are required by law to keep for seven years, which we cannot delete on request.