# Categorising company officers: companies or humans

**URL:** <http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/t/categorising-company-officers-companies-or-humans/990>\
**Category:** Information\
**Created:** [February 19, 2017, 12:26am UTC](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/t/categorising-company-officers-companies-or-humans/990 "2017-02-19T00:26:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bencpearce](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/65b543/32.png) [@bencpearce](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/u/bencpearce)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2017, 12:26am UTC](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/t/categorising-company-officers-companies-or-humans/990/1 "2017-02-19T00:26:15Z")

</div>

Hi all,  
For my application it would be useful to be able to categorise listed company officers as either human or companies. I’m sure there’s perhaps a simple way but I’m lost - I had held out hope that the “is\_corporate\_officer” instance within the Officer Appointment List might work but unfortunately not. I also thought perhaps date of birth but this data is often incomplete for human officers. I was wondering whether any others have come across this issue and found a way to overcome it?  
Thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ash](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@ash](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/u/ash)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2017, 10:09am UTC](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/t/categorising-company-officers-companies-or-humans/990/2 "2017-02-20T10:09:10Z")

</div>

There are a couple of possibilities that I’m aware of, however I’m not sure if there is a definitive right way to do things and would be interested in hearing if there is!

I think all corporate officers have an “identification” block that is not present for human officers.

Also the “officer\_role” field explicitly says “corporate-director” as opposed to just “director”.

I don’t know if these are 100% reliable, but I haven’t had issues with them.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![voracityemail](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b77776/32.png) [@voracityemail](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/u/voracityemail)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/t/categorising-company-officers-companies-or-humans/990/3 "2017-02-22T20:40:25Z")

</div>

I second both points above. I’d use the officer\_role field - there’s a range of constants starting “'corporate-” ([see the constants.yml file](https://github.com/companieshouse/api-enumerations/blob/master/constants.yml)). I wouldn’t _depend_ on the “identification” block being there but it seems to be consistent.

For reference if you want to do the same with pscs the “kind” field splits them into individuals, corporates, legal persons (and super-secures).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![voracityemail](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/b77776/32.png) [@voracityemail](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/u/voracityemail)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 1:15pm UTC](http://forum.companieshouse.gov.uk/t/categorising-company-officers-companies-or-humans/990/4 "2017-03-15T13:15:08Z")

</div>

I’ve created a question on this point as the data really does seem to be inconsistent (or people - certainly me - need some guidance on the rules!) - [officer\_role values - meaning of "corporate"](http://forum.aws.chdev.org/t/officer-role-values-meaning-of-corporate/1034)