Search for and retrieve UK company officers and persons-with-significant-control (PSC) data via the Companies House Public Data API

Steps

1. Register at developer.company-information.service.gov.uk and obtain a standard Public Data API key; authenticate by passing the key as the username in HTTP Basic Auth with an empty password
2. Search for a company by name or number using GET https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/search/companies?q={companyName}; extract the company_number from the result
3. Retrieve the list of current and resigned officers by calling GET https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/{company_number}/officers; paginate using items_per_page and start_index parameters
4. Retrieve PSC records (persons and entities with significant control) via GET https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/{company_number}/persons-with-significant-control; parse the natures_of_control array and identification fields
5. Check identity verification status on each director record — as of late 2025, records include an identity_verification_status field reflecting whether the individual has completed Companies House identity verification under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA)
6. For corporate PSCs, follow the psc-corporate endpoint and extract the identification.registration_number and identification.country_registered to perform cross-registry verification