UK Disqualified Directors

Search the Companies House register of disqualified company directors and get every match as a clean row, with the start and end dates, the statutory reason, the court, the case reference and the companies the disqualification relates to. No API key, no account, no login.

🔍 What does UK Disqualified Directors do?

It searches the register of disqualified directors published by Companies House and returns one row per officer. Type a surname, a full name, a company name or a postcode, and every matching entry comes back with the disqualification dates and the reason attached.

The register is the statutory list of people and companies barred from running a UK company. A director ends up on it through an undertaking agreed with the Insolvency Service, an order made by a court, or a designation under UK sanctions legislation. The easiest way to try it is to run the prefilled search for smith and look at the output table.

Most name lists stop at the name. This one opens each officer's own register page as well, which is where the start date, end date, statutory reason, court, case reference and the companies involved actually live. That is the difference between knowing somebody shares a name with a disqualified director and knowing whether they are barred today, until when, and what for.

📊 What data can I extract from the disqualified directors register?

One row per officer. Every field below is published by Companies House itself, and nothing is inferred, enriched or joined to any other source.

Field	Description
officerId	Companies House identifier for the register entry, stable across runs
name	Name as published, including any alias the register records
officerType	natural for a disqualified person, corporate for a disqualified company
dateOfBirth	Date of birth as published, YYYY-MM-DD, null for corporate entries
nationality	Nationality as published on the officer page
description	The one line summary the register prints under the name
addressSnippet	Address given by the disqualifying authority, as one line
address	The same address split into premises, addressLine1, addressLine2, locality, region, postalCode and country
postcode	Postcode on its own, for sorting and joining
disqualificationCount	How many disqualifications the register holds for this officer
isCurrentlyDisqualified	True when at least one disqualification was still running on the retrieval date
disqualificationType	Undertaking, Court order or Sanction, for the leading entry
startDate	Date the leading disqualification began
endDate	Date it ends, null on a sanction, which runs until the designation is lifted
reason	The statutory reason, quoted from the register
caseReference	Case reference, sometimes several separated by commas
court	Court that made the order, null on an undertaking or a sanction
sanctionListReference	UK sanction list reference, on sanction entries only
companyNames	Companies the leading disqualification relates to
disqualifications	Every disqualification held by the officer, most recent first, each with its own type, dates, case, court, companies, reason and isInForce flag
detailsUrl	The public Companies House page the row was read from
retrievedAt	When the row was collected, ISO 8601

An officer can hold more than one disqualification. When they do, the flat fields describe the leading one, meaning whichever is still in force, or the most recent if none is, and the disqualifications array carries the full set.

💡 Why search the disqualified directors register?

Counterparty checks. Run a supplier, a contractor or a new client through the register before signing, and get the dates back rather than a yes or no, so a disqualification that ended in 2019 is not treated like one that runs to 2036.

Onboarding and KYC. Screen a batch of director names in one run and keep detailsUrl on every row, so an analyst reviewing a hit lands straight on the official page instead of searching for it again.

Insolvency and restructuring work. Search a company name and see which of its former directors were disqualified for conduct while acting for it, with the case reference and the court attached.

Journalism and research. Pull the entries behind a company, a postcode or a surname and get the statutory reason verbatim, which is the part that says whether this was unfit conduct, a conviction, or a sanctions designation.

Register monitoring. Re-run the same search on a schedule and diff the output, because officerId is stable, so a new entry against a name you watch shows up as a new row.

🚀 How do I use UK Disqualified Directors?

1. Click Try for free.
2. Put a surname, a full name, a company name or a postcode into query. The register matches on the name and on the address the disqualifying authority gave.
3. Leave fetchDisqualificationDetails on, so each row comes back with its dates, reason, court and companies.
4. Narrow it if you want to: officerType splits people from companies, disqualificationType keeps undertakings, court orders or sanctions, and activeOnly drops disqualifications that have already expired.
5. Set maxResults to cap what the run can cost, and maxRecordsScanned to cap how far it reads when the filters are narrow.
6. Click Start, then download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them from the API.

⬇️ Input

{
  "query": "smith",
  "officerType": "natural",
  "activeOnly": true,
  "fetchDisqualificationDetails": true,
  "maxResults": 100
}

Field	Type	Default	What it does
query	string	smith	Name, company name or postcode to search. Required
officerType	string	any	any, natural for people, corporate for companies
disqualificationType	string	any	any, Undertaking, Court order or Sanction
activeOnly	boolean	false	Keep only disqualifications still in force on the run date
fetchDisqualificationDetails	boolean	true	Open each officer page for the dates, reason, court and companies
maxResults	integer	100	Hard cap on billable results. Maximum 300
maxRecordsScanned	integer	400	Safety stop on how many officers are read when the filters are narrow

activeOnly and disqualificationType are read from the officer page, so setting either one switches fetchDisqualificationDetails back on and says so in the log. A filter that is accepted and then never applied is worse than one that is rejected, because it hands back the wrong answer with full confidence.

⬆️ Output

Table view

Results arrive as a Disqualified officers table you can sort and filter in the Console, with the name, type, date of birth, disqualification dates and the link to the register entry lined up for scanning. A second view, Cases and companies, lines up the reason, the case reference, the court and the companies instead, which is the view to use when you are reading why rather than who.

JSON

A typical row, with fictional values in place of a real person:

{
  "officerId": "b0FM3wgkYJ_p3TGirZotCfndF7c",
  "name": "Jane Alexandra EXAMPLE",
  "officerType": "natural",
  "dateOfBirth": "1980-01-01",
  "nationality": "British",
  "description": "Born on 1 January 1980 - Disqualified",
  "addressSnippet": "1 Example Street, Exampleton, United Kingdom, EX1 1EX",
  "postcode": "EX1 1EX",
  "disqualificationCount": 1,
  "isCurrentlyDisqualified": true,
  "disqualificationType": "Undertaking",
  "startDate": "2024-03-05",
  "endDate": "2031-03-04",
  "reason": "Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 (Section 7): Disqualification order or undertaking; and reporting provisions",
  "caseReference": "INV0000000",
  "court": null,
  "sanctionListReference": null,
  "companyNames": ["EXAMPLE TRADING LTD"],
  "detailsUrl": "https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/disqualified-officers/natural/b0FM3wgkYJ_p3TGirZotCfndF7c",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-08-16T09:00:00.000Z"
}

disqualificationCount and isCurrentlyDisqualified are null, not zero and false, when fetchDisqualificationDetails is off. Nothing about the disqualification has been read in that mode, and unknown is not the same statement as none about a named person.

Every run also writes a RUN_SUMMARY record to the key-value store with the search that ran, how many entries the register held, how many officers were read and saved, how many pages could not be read, and why the run stopped: complete, max-results-reached, scan-limit-reached, time-limit-reached, page-limit-reached, charge-limit-reached or error.

The three kinds of disqualification

The register mixes three routes onto the same list, and they do not carry the same fields.

Undertaking. The director agreed not to act rather than fight it in court. caseReference starts with INV and there is no court. This is the commonest kind.

Court order. A judge imposed it. There is a court, and caseReference is the court's own reference, occasionally several of them separated by commas.

Sanction. A designation under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. These carry a sanctionListReference instead of a case reference, have no end date, and are usually corporate rather than natural. An open ended sanction that has already started is reported as in force, because it runs until the designation is lifted.

What the search matches, and how far it pages

The register is searched by name and by the address the disqualifying authority provided. A surname works, a full name works, a company name works, and a postcode works. A town or city name on its own does not, because the locality is not part of the searchable text.

Companies House serves this search 20 records at a time and will not page past the 2,000th match. A query with more matches than that logs a warning and reads from the start of the list, so a very common surname is better split into full names than run wide. maxResults caps a single run at 300 officers and maxRecordsScanned caps how many are read looking for them, so a narrow filter over a common name stops and says so rather than running until the clock does. Requests are paced deliberately and run one at a time, because this is a government service and there is no reason to lean on it.

Data source

Companies House, find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The register of disqualified directors is a statutory public register: Companies House is required to publish it, and the entries are public precisely so that anyone dealing with a director can check.

This Actor returns what the register publishes and nothing else. There is no enrichment, no matching against other sources, no address lookup and no attempt to link an entry to a living person beyond the identifiers Companies House itself prints. Entries are a snapshot, so link back to detailsUrl for the current position.

💰 How much does it cost?

You pay per officer returned, so a run that saves 100 officers is 100 billable results. Nothing else is charged: opening an officer's page for the dates and the reason costs you no extra.

Set maxResults to cap what a run can cost. Use officerType, disqualificationType and activeOnly to avoid paying for rows you were going to throw away, since a filtered row is never saved and never billed. A search that matches nobody saves nothing and costs nothing. Paid Apify plans get a lower rate per officer.

🔌 Integrations

Send results straight to Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable, Zapier, Make or your own webhook using Apify integrations. Schedule a run so a watched name is rechecked every week, monitor runs from the Console, and trigger a run from another tool when a new supplier or client record is created.

🔗 Using UK Disqualified Directors with the Apify API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/spookyweb~uk-disqualified-directors/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "smith", "officerType": "natural", "activeOnly": true, "maxResults": 100}'

Or with the Apify client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('spookyweb/uk-disqualified-directors').call({
  query: 'smith',
  officerType: 'natural',
  activeOnly: true,
  maxResults: 100,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Full detail is in the Apify API reference, and every run is also callable from the Python and JavaScript clients.

❓ FAQ

Do I need a Companies House API key?

No. The Companies House REST API does require a free key, but this Actor does not use it. It reads the same register from the public Companies House service, which needs no key, no account and no sign in.

How do I tell whether somebody is disqualified right now?

Read isCurrentlyDisqualified. It is true when at least one of the officer's disqualifications was still running on retrievedAt, comparing against endDate inclusively, false when every one of them has ended, and null when fetchDisqualificationDetails was off and no page was read. Set activeOnly to true and only the officers still disqualified are returned at all. Expired entries stay on the register, so a hit on a name is not the same thing as a live disqualification.

What does the reason field actually say?

It quotes the statute. Section 6 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 is unfit conduct as a director of an insolvent company, Section 7 covers a disqualification order or undertaking, Section 2 is disqualification on conviction of an indictable offence, and Section 3A of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 covers designated persons. The text is copied from the register rather than summarised.

Can I search by company instead of by person?

Yes. Put the company name into query. The register matches disqualified corporate entities by their own name, and the companyNames field on each row lists the companies a person's disqualification relates to, so a company search and a company name in the output are two different things worth checking.

Why do some rows have no end date?

Because they are sanctions. A disqualification under sanctions legislation runs for as long as the designation does, so the register prints a start date and nothing else. Those rows carry a sanctionListReference and are reported as in force once they have started.

How many results can one search return?

maxResults tops out at 300, which is what one run reads inside the 300 second default run timeout with the disqualification details switched on, since that is one page fetch per officer. A run that gets close to the limit stops on its own, keeps every row it collected and records time-limit-reached in the run summary, rather than being killed part way through. Raise the run timeout in the Console for a longer pull, or split the search into narrower queries, for example a full name rather than a surname.

Companies House itself serves 20 records per page and refuses to page beyond the 2,000th match, so 2,000 is the absolute ceiling for a single search term however many matches the register reports.

Does an officer ever have more than one disqualification?

Yes, and the register puts them all on one page. disqualificationCount says how many, the disqualifications array carries each one with its own dates, case, court, companies and reason, and the flat fields on the row describe whichever is still in force or, failing that, the most recent.

What happens if my search matches nobody?

The run finishes successfully with an empty dataset and a log line telling you so. A clean director is the normal case and is not an error, so nothing fails and nothing is billed.

⚖️ Is it legal to search the disqualified directors register?

Companies House publishes the register of disqualified directors under a statutory duty, and it is free to search by anyone, without an account. It exists so that people dealing with a company can find out whether a director is barred. The data is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which permits commercial use with attribution.

Because the register names individuals, this Actor deliberately publishes only what Companies House publishes and adds nothing to it. If you are processing these rows in the UK or the EU you are still the controller of what you do next, so use them for the purpose the register exists for and keep the detailsUrl link so any hit can be verified against the official page. Apify's ethical scraping guide covers the wider picture.

👍 Your feedback

Found a bug, or want a field that is not here yet? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Requests that make the data more useful get built, and problems get fixed quickly.

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