If the company was closed / dissolved more than 6 years ago then you can’t get it via this API. See the forum article. (Exception - companies restored by court order.)
The example you give: 05207708 - “MONEY EXPRESS TRANSFER INTERNATIONAL LTD.” was apparently dissolved 07/05/2008 - so the data won’t be available in the CH API.
You can get filing info for this (and presumably other old companies) if you’re willing to pay via other CH services:
- Manually via WebChHeck - if you enter the company number or name and search for it, then locate “Order information on this company” you’ll see a list of filings. One pound each.
- If you were doing this a lot the automated way would be to sign up for the CH XML Gateway (the predecessor to the Beta API). There’s a regular subscription charge and also a charge for downloading documents. There’s info at the CH Services page, you’re looking for the “Companies House Direct (CHD)” section. If you search around there’s a forum too to check if there are any restrictions on e.g. old data.
More detail
You can find out if an old company (not in API) existed programmatically via the Company URI - see the guide. Note: you get limited data, the fields may not quite match those in the CH API, plus any error is returned as a chunk of HTML whatever format you’ve requested…
The behaviour of the API around data limits could IMO be more helpful:
-
Sometimes excluded data is treated as an “unknown unknown” - e.g. in your example looking for the company profile gives the same error as if the company had never existed:
curl -u{API KEY}: “https://api.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05207708”
{“errors”:
[ { “type” : “ch:service”, “error” : “company-profile-not-found” } ]
} -
As you found when looking for the filing history, it seems to say “something here” - or at least doesn’t give a 404 “Filing history not available for this company” as the documentation might lead you to believe - but then gives zero results:
curl -u{API KEY}: “https://api.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05207708/filing-history”
{
“start_index” : 0, “filing_history_status” : “filing-history-available”,
“items” : [ ], “total_count” : 0, “items_per_page” : 25
}
(These behaviours are the same if you use a non-existent company number).