How to keep your home address off Companies House

Your home address becomes public the moment you use it as a registered office or as a director's service address, because both sit on the Companies House register, which anyone can search free. Moving one of them and leaving the other is the most common mistake in this whole market, and it achieves nothing.

Quick answer: Buy a virtual office plan that covers both the registered office and a director's service address, then file form AD01 to move the registered office and form CH01 to move your service address, both free. Old filings keep the home address unless you apply to suppress them at £30 a document.

Which two addresses put your home on the public register?

Two separate records expose a home address: the company's registered office and each director's service address. A third, the address of any person with significant control, usually mirrors the director's record. All three are public, and a change to one leaves the others untouched.

The registered office belongs to the company and is where Companies House, HMRC and the courts write to it. The service address belongs to you. It is the address shown against your name on the register, and it follows you across every company you direct. People buy a £39 registered office, file the change, feel relieved, and leave their flat visible under their own name for years. Our guide to the three addresses a provider can sell you explains why they are sold separately.

How do you change your registered office and service address?

You change the registered office with form AD01 and your service address with form CH01, both filed online with Companies House at no charge. The new registered office must pass the appropriate address test that has applied since 4 March 2024, and the provider must have agreed to act for you before you file.

The registered office has to be an address that does the legal job. What counts as an appropriate address is a short test: post must be expected to reach someone acting for the company, and delivery must be capable of being acknowledged. A virtual office provider that signs for post passes it. Your own home passed it too, which is why so many people used it in the first place.

Can you remove your home address from old Companies House filings?

You can apply to Companies House to suppress a home address from documents already on the register, at £30 for each document, and the registrar decides whether to grant it. It is not automatic, it is not free, and you must have another address in place for the post to go to first.

That last point sets the order of events. The virtual office comes first, then the AD01 and CH01 filings, then the suppression application listing each document you want cleaned. A company with ten years of confirmation statements and annual returns can have dozens of documents showing the address, and the fee applies to each one.

Suppression only covers the official register. Third-party sites that scrape and republish Companies House data keep their own copies and update on their own schedule. Some remove an address on request, some do not, and none of them are bound by the registrar's decision. Search for your own name and postcode after the changes go through and contact each site individually.

Which virtual office plans include a director's service address?

A director's service address is included in the base price at some providers and sold as a separate add-on at most. The add-on costs £22 to £30 a year at formation agents and up to £25 a month at workspace operators, so the difference matters more than it looks.

Two things stand out. The cheapest complete answer in London is a Mayfair plan with the director's address included, at £20 a month with VAT in the price¹, and one of the cheapest in Scotland is Clyde Offices, which covers two directors in its base £19 plan²; the other Glasgow virtual office addresses we list mostly charge per name. At the formation agents, Capital Office's registered plus director's address bundle at £49.99 a year is cheaper than buying the two parts separately³, and Companies MadeSimple's Privacy Package exists precisely for this job, though at £99.99 a year it is the dear formation agent⁶. The full picture of what the add-on does to a headline price is in our guide to the cost of a director's service address add-on. Outer London is cheaper still if the postcode does not matter: London Virtual Address sells a registered office and director's address bundle from an E17 Walthamstow address at £31.99 for the first year, a promotional rate against a regular £63.99⁸.

What else leaks your home address?

Four other places commonly expose a director's home address: the company's own website, invoices and email footers, Google Business Profile, and trade mark or licence registers. A virtual office fixes the first two only if the plan permits trading use of the address.

A limited company must show its registered office, company number and place of registration on its website and business letters, so the address you file is the address you publish. Buy a plan that allows that, because a statutory-mail-only registered office does not. Google Business Profile is a separate problem: some providers refuse to let virtual office clients list the address there, and WERKS Group in Brighton says so on its own page⁹. If you sell locally, check before you buy. Providers such as those on our Bristol virtual office addresses and Sheffield addresses with scanning included pages state trading use explicitly, which is the thing to look for.

What order should you do it in?

Do it in six steps, and do not file anything until the address is live:

1. Buy a plan that covers the registered office and a director's service address, and pass the provider's identity checks.
2. File AD01 to move the registered office.
3. File CH01 to move your service address, and update the PSC record if you are a person with significant control.
4. Apply to suppress the historic filings if it matters to you, at £30 a document.
5. Update your website, invoices, bank, HMRC and Google Business Profile.
6. Search your own name and postcode, and ask the scraper sites to update.

If privacy is your whole reason for buying, compare on the total for both addresses rather than the registered office alone. The comparison tool lets you compare plans that cover both addresses and shows the price with the add-on included. Some providers pay us if you buy; our note on commission explains why that does not change the ranking.

Where these figures come from

Prices were read from each provider's own website on 8 September 2026.

1. W1 Virtual Office homepage: VO Collect £20 a month or £220 a year inc VAT, listing registered office, director's service address and business address as included; 45 Albemarle Street, W1S 4JL.
2. Clyde Offices, virtual office Glasgow page: £19 a month plus VAT rolling; base price includes two company names and two personal or director names, extra names £5 per name per month.
3. Capital Office pricing page: director's address £22 a year, registered office plus director's address £49.99 a year, both ex VAT.
4. 1st Formations registered office page and Rapid Formations London registered office page: director's service address £26 a year at each.
5. The Hoxton Mix help centre: director's address add-on £3 a month or £30 a year per director or beneficial owner, plus VAT.
6. Companies MadeSimple renewals page: Privacy Package £99.99 a year covering registered office and director's service address.
7. Argyll registered office address page: directors' service address £25 a month.
8. London Virtual Address homepage: registered office plus director's service address £31.99 at 50 per cent off, regular price £63.99; Walthamstow E17 3NU. VAT treatment not stated.
9. WERKS Group virtual office page: states virtual office clients cannot register the address with Google Business Profile.
10. Uniwide service address page: £29 plus VAT a year.