Identity Verification requirements for PSCs

1

Hello. I have a couple of questions regarding the identity verification requirements for PSCs.

Existing PSCs

For existing PSCs, according to the press release titled Companies House confirms identity verification rollout from 18 November 2025 published on 5 August 2025:

existing PSCs will need to verify their identity in line with an appointed day within 12 months of the commencement of mandatory identity verification on 18 November

Cross checking this with the schema status page I noticed there’s a new schema called PSCVerificationStatement-v1-0.xsd

Questions:

  • Is PSCVerificationStatement-v1-0.xsd the confirmation statement that should be submitted according to the comment above? What is the deadline for this verification to be submitted?

  • Will there be a PDF form version of PSCVerificationStatement-v1-0.xsd that the company can fill in manually and submit to Companies House or can this confirmation only be submitted through the XML Gateway?

New PSCs

For new PSCs there are no explicit instructions, so I assume that the new schema PSCNotification-v1-2.xsd should be used to notify the company of the new PSC alongside their verification details. Is this correct?

Will there be an update to the AP01 PDF form that the company can fill in manually and submit to Companies House or can this confirmation only be done through the XML Gateway?

Also, I assume the identify verification only applies to individual PSCs. Is this a correct assumption?

Thanks in advance for clarifying these questions.

2

Yes, the VS01 is indeed the new schema to be used to advise verification details of existing PSCs. There will also be a web service that allows a PSC to do this. There will be no paper version of the VS01.

Yes, there will be a new paper version of AP01.

SDN