Terms and Conditions

1. Who we are and how to contact us

Company Search UK operates companysearchuk.co.uk and provides UK company search and report services.

The quickest way to reach us, for any question, order problem, refund request or complaint, is by email to help@companysearchuk.co.uk. We aim to acknowledge messages within one working day. You can also use the contact form on our website.

Company Search UK is an independent company search and report service. We are not Companies House, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting on behalf of Companies House or the UK Government. Company information may also be available directly from Companies House. We are not a credit reference agency, a law firm, an accountancy practice or a financial adviser.

2. Definitions and interpretation

• “We”, “us” and “our” mean Company Search UK.
• “You” means the person or organisation using the website or placing an order.
• “Consumer” means an individual acting wholly or mainly outside their trade, business, craft or profession. “Business customer” means anyone else.
• “Report” means the UK Company Information Report: a digitally generated PDF document consolidating information retrieved from the Companies House public register for a company you select.
• “Register information” means information published on, or obtained from, the Companies House public register.
• “Order page” means the private page on our website, reached using your order reference and a private access token, from which your report can be downloaded.
• Headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation. “Including” means “including without limitation”.

3. Scope of these terms

These terms govern your use of the website and any purchase you make from us. By using the website or placing an order you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the service. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data.

4. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract. If you order on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to bind it, and that organisation is a business customer.

5. Consumers and business customers

Most of these terms apply to everyone. Where a clause applies only to consumers or only to business customers, we say so. Consumers have statutory rights under UK consumer law that these terms do not, and cannot, remove or reduce. The liability position in clause 21 differs for business customers.

6. Free company information on our website

You can search for a company and view a limited company summary on our website free of charge. The free company summary is limited to:

• Company name
• Company number
• Company status
• Incorporation date
• Company type
• Jurisdiction
• Registered office address
• Previous company names, where available
• Nature of business and SIC codes

That is the full extent of the information we make available free of charge. We do not provide access to the complete Companies House register, or to all company information, free of charge through our website. Register information may be available from Companies House directly.

7. What the paid report contains

Detailed company information is supplied only in the paid report. Subject to what the register holds and returns at the time of retrieval, the report may include:

• Current and resigned officers
• Persons with significant control
• Ownership and control information
• Filing history
• Accounts information
• Confirmation statements
• Registered charges
• Insolvency information
• Other detailed company records included in the report

• The report is a digitally generated PDF that consolidates and formats register information for the single company you select.
• The report is prepared automatically after payment. It is not manually reviewed, investigated or verified by a person before delivery.
• The report contains no credit score, credit rating, creditworthiness assessment, valuation, recommendation or advice of any kind.
• The report is not a Companies House document, is not certified, and must not be presented as an official or government-issued document.

8. What you are paying for

The underlying register information is public sector information published by Companies House and may be obtained from Companies House. The £14.99 fee covers our service: retrieving the information on request, preparing, compiling and formatting the report, delivering it to you and the related customer service. We do not claim that public register information is private, proprietary or exclusively owned by us.

9. Checking the company before you buy

Before purchasing, check the company name and company number carefully. The company number is the only reliable identifier; similar or identical company names are common.

10. Ordering and formation of the contract

• You select a company, provide an email address (and, optionally, a name) and submit payment details through our payment provider.
• Your order is an offer to buy the report. A contract is formed only when your payment is successfully authorised and we begin preparing your report.
• If we cannot accept your order — for example, because payment fails, the company cannot be found, or we suspect fraud or misuse — we will tell you and will not charge you, or will refund any amount taken.
• You are responsible for the accuracy of the company you select and the email address you provide.

11. Price and payment

• The UK Company Information Report costs £14.99.
• The price is shown in pounds sterling, is confirmed on screen before you commit to buy, and the amount charged is determined by us on our servers, not by your browser.
• Purchases are one-off. We do not create subscriptions, stored payment arrangements or recurring charges.
• Payments are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered directly into Stripe’s payment form and are never received or stored by us. We receive confirmation of the payment, its status and limited transaction identifiers.
• Your bank or card issuer may apply currency conversion or international transaction charges. Those charges are outside our control.

12. Digital content and your cancellation right

Where UK consumer law applies, a consumer buying digital content at a distance normally has 14 days to cancel. That right can be lost before the end of the 14 days only where the consumer has given express consent to supply beginning immediately and has acknowledged that the cancellation right will be lost. Our checkout does not currently collect that separate express consent and acknowledgement.

Accordingly, placing an order and accepting these terms does not by itself mean that you have given express consent to immediate supply, and it does not by itself mean that you lose or waive your 14-day cancellation right. We do not ask you to waive or surrender that right.

Our report is generated automatically shortly after payment, so supply will usually have begun before any cancellation request reaches us. If you cancel within the 14-day period we will handle your request under clause 14, and we will not refuse a refund on the basis that you consented to immediate supply when no such consent was collected. Where the law allows us to make a deduction for content already supplied, we will explain any deduction before applying it.

Cancelling does not affect your other statutory rights, including your rights if the report is faulty, not as described or not supplied at all — see clauses 14 and 21.

13. Delivery

• The completed report is supplied electronically as a PDF using the delivery method currently implemented on the website: after payment you are taken to a private order page that shows the progress of your report and provides a download link once the PDF is ready.
• Access to the order page requires your order reference together with a private access token contained in the link. Anyone who has that link can reach the report, so treat it as confidential and keep it safe.
• Download links issued from the order page are individually signed and short-lived. You can request a new one from the order page while your report remains available.
• We do not currently promise delivery of the report or the order-page link by email, and we do not promise a specific delivery time. Preparation normally completes shortly after payment, but it can take longer when the Companies House service is slow, busy or unavailable.
• If your report has not been produced, or you cannot reach your order page, email us and we will restore access or put the matter right under clause 14.

14. Report access and retention

Report download access remains available for 30 days from delivery. Our retention policy for orders is 30 days: after that period the private access token, the stored report file and the report data snapshot are no longer made available to you, and we do not keep report downloads, access tokens or report-data snapshots available for longer than 30 days. Within the 30-day period you may download the report as many times as you reasonably need.

If you lose your link during that period, email help@companysearchuk.co.uk from the address used at checkout and we will restore access where we can verify the order. We cannot restore a report after the 30-day access period has ended, although you may order a fresh report at any time.

15. Cancellations and refunds

These provisions are part of these terms; there is no separate refund policy. Every request is considered on its merits, and we do not operate a blanket “no refunds” rule. We will normally refund in full where:

• you were charged more than once for the same order (duplicate payment);
• payment was taken but no report was delivered;
• a technical failure prevented delivery, or delivery failed and we cannot supply a working replacement;
• the report is materially different from its description;
• the report is faulty, incorrect, unreadable or corrupted;
• the report covers the wrong company because of an error on our side;
• you cancelled before preparation and supply of your report began; or
• a refund is required by law.

Change of mind. If you change your mind after supply has begun, contact us within 14 days of your order and we will consider your request under clause 12 and applicable consumer law. We will not refuse such a request on the basis of a consent to immediate supply that our checkout does not collect.

Wrong company selected by you. If you selected the wrong company, contact us promptly. We will normally offer a goodwill remedy — usually a replacement report for the correct company or a refund — for a genuine mistake reported promptly.

Limited register information. Where the public register simply holds less information than you expected, we may decline a refund because we present what the register returns and do not control its content. This does not affect your rights where the report is faulty, not as described or not supplied.

How to request a refund. Email help@companysearchuk.co.uk with your order reference, the email address used at checkout and a short description of the problem, or use the contact form on our website. We may first offer to put things right, for example by regenerating or reissuing the report, which is often quicker than a refund; you are not obliged to accept a repair or replacement where the law gives you a right to a refund.

Approved refunds will be returned to the original payment method without undue delay and, where required by law, no later than 14 days after we agree that you are entitled to the refund. Your bank or card issuer may take further time to show the credit.

If something has gone wrong, please contact us before raising a chargeback. Chargebacks usually take considerably longer to resolve than a direct refund. Nothing in this clause restricts or excludes any mandatory consumer right.

16. Unavailable, delayed or incomplete register information

The report reflects what the Companies House register returns at the moment of retrieval. Some companies have very little information on the register, some sections may be empty, and some filings may not yet be processed or published. Where a section shows nothing recorded, that means nothing was returned at retrieval; it is not a statement that no such matter exists or that no risk exists.

17. Companies House interruptions and rate limits

We depend on the Companies House public data service, which may be unavailable, slow, or may limit the rate at which we can request information. Where this delays your report we will keep the order page updated and will continue attempting delivery. Where it prevents delivery altogether, clause 15 applies.

18. Retrieval time and the effective date of the report

Each report records the date and time its information was retrieved, and presents the information available from Companies House at that recorded date and time. Register information changes continuously, so a report is a snapshot and may become out of date after retrieval. We do not guarantee the completeness or current accuracy of information originally supplied by Companies House. If currency matters to your decision, order a fresh report or check the register directly.

Reports are provided for informational purposes only. They are not legal, financial, investment, accounting, tax, regulatory, credit or other professional advice, and you should take professional advice where appropriate.

19. How you may use the report

• You may use a report for your own personal purposes or for the internal purposes of your own business, including sharing it internally and with your own professional advisers.
• You may not resell, republish, license, distribute or make a report available as a standalone product or as part of a competing service.
• You may not remove or obscure our branding, attribution, disclaimers or the retrieval date.
• You may not present a report as an official, certified or government-issued document.

The website, its design, our report layout, formatting, wording, branding and original content are owned by us or licensed to us. The underlying register information is public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

20. Acceptable use

• Do not use the service unlawfully, or to harass, intimidate, defame, stalk or endanger any person, or in breach of data protection law.
• Do not scrape, crawl, bulk-download, systematically extract or automate access to the website or our search results.
• Do not attempt to interfere with, overload, probe or gain unauthorised access to the service or to any other customer’s order page.
• Do not use false, misleading or another person’s details when ordering, and do not attempt fraudulent payment.

We may refuse, suspend or cancel an order, restrict access, or terminate use of the service where we reasonably believe these rules have been broken or that an order is fraudulent or abusive. Where we cancel an order for that reason we will refund any payment taken unless we are prevented from doing so by law or by a fraud investigation.

21. Our liability to you

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded — including, for consumers, liability under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and other mandatory consumer protection law. All liability that cannot legally be excluded or restricted is preserved in full.

We accept responsibility where a report is not delivered, is faulty, is incorrect through our error, or is materially different from its description, and we will remedy that under clause 15.

Consumers. If we fail to comply with these terms we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach, but we are not responsible for unforeseeable loss or damage. Your statutory rights in relation to digital content that is not of satisfactory quality, not as described or not fit for a purpose you made known to us are fully preserved and include repair, replacement, a price reduction or a refund. Where — and only where — the law permits us to do so, our liability for other loss arising from a report is limited to the amount you paid for that report; that limitation does not apply to any liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Business customers. Subject to the first paragraph of this clause, we exclude all implied terms, conditions and warranties to the fullest extent permitted by law; we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of business, loss of contracts, loss of goodwill, loss of anticipated savings, or loss arising from decisions taken in reliance on register information; and our total liability arising out of or in connection with a report, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to the greater of the amount you paid for that report and £100.

22. Your responsibility for misuse

You are responsible for how you use the website and any report. You agree to reimburse us for losses, costs and claims we suffer that arise directly from your unlawful use of the service, your breach of clause 19 or clause 20, or your fraudulent conduct. This does not apply to losses caused by our own breach or negligence, and nothing in this clause requires a consumer to accept liability beyond what the law permits.

23. Third-party services

We rely on third parties to operate: Companies House for register information, Stripe for payments, and our hosting, database and file storage providers. Their availability and performance are outside our control. We cannot amend, correct or influence what appears on the Companies House register; corrections to the register must be raised with Companies House or the company concerned.

24. Availability, maintenance and matters outside our control

We aim to keep the service available but do not guarantee uninterrupted access. We may suspend the service for maintenance, security or technical reasons, and will try to minimise disruption. We are not responsible for delay or failure caused by events outside our reasonable control, including third-party outages, internet or hosting failures, government action, industrial action or natural events. If such an event materially affects your order we will contact you and, if the report cannot be delivered, refund you.

25. Privacy and data protection

We handle personal data as described in our Privacy Policy, which explains what we collect, why, the lawful bases we rely on, who receives it, how long we keep it and the rights available to you.

26. Complaints and disputes

If you are unhappy with any part of the service, email help@companysearchuk.co.uk with your order reference and details. We will acknowledge your complaint promptly, investigate, and respond with our conclusion and any remedy we offer. If you remain dissatisfied you keep all rights to take the matter further, including through the courts. Nothing here requires you to use our complaints process before exercising your legal rights.

27. Changes to the service and these terms

We may change the service and these terms, for example to reflect changes in the law, in our providers or in what the register makes available. The version of these terms in force at the time of your purchase governs that purchase. Continued use of the website after a change means you accept the updated terms for future orders.

28. General

• Severability: if any provision is found unlawful or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in force.
• Waiver: a delay or failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment: we may transfer our rights and obligations to another organisation, and will tell you if we do; your rights under these terms will not be affected. You may not transfer your rights without our written consent.
• Entire agreement: these terms, together with the order confirmation and the information shown at checkout, form the whole agreement between us. Nothing in this clause limits liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Third-party rights: nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms.

29. Governing law and jurisdiction

Company Search UK operates from Victoria, Australia. These terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia.

This choice of law does not override or reduce mandatory consumer protection law. If you are a consumer resident in the United Kingdom, you may rely on the mandatory consumer laws that apply in the part of the United Kingdom where you live, and you may bring proceedings in the courts applicable to where you live.

30. Contact

Questions about these terms: help@companysearchuk.co.uk, or use the contact form.