The children who control British companies

The 10,982 newborns: mostly a wrong date in the birth box#

For every controller the register asks for two dates: when they were born and when they became a controller. The published data gives the month and year of birth. In 10,982 records the year of birth is the year the person became a controller. On paper, they controlled a company before their first birthday.

A real group of babies would include about as many one-month-olds as babies in their first month. The register has 6,297 records of people born in the very month they became controllers, 986 of people one month old, 104 at eleven months, and about 39 a month in the second and third years. Being recorded in your birth month is 6.4 times as common as being recorded a month later. Real babies do not arrive that way.

A second trace points the same way. In 38% of these records the same name appears again in the same company with an adult’s date of birth, usually the same person entered twice or corrected. Among adults aged 30 to 60 a name repeats like that in 3.7% of records. Counting the excess in the birth month and the twins born in other months, at least six in ten of the “newborns” are wrong dates of birth.

From 18 November 2025 every new controller had to verify their identity. The latest “newborn” before that has a controller date of 17 November 2025, and fewer than ten are dated after it. They had already become rare in 2024, after running at between 57 and 168 for every 100,000 new records each year from 2016 to 2023, then rose again just before the checks: 23 in September 2025, 39 in October and 22 in the first seventeen days of November. These are the dates people became controllers; when each record was filed is not published.

The children: 5,511 records that seldom show the signs of an error#

Leave the newborns aside and the register still holds 5,511 records of controllers under 16 when recorded: 5,288 different children in 4,734 companies. The largest age groups are 1 (708 records) and 15 (818). Another 200 were set aside because the child’s year of birth is also the year the company was founded, a sign of the company’s date typed into the birth field.

Overall 8% of these records have an adult twin; from the age of 4 it is 4.7%, against 3.7% among adults and 38% among the newborns. At ages 1 to 3 a twin turns up in 16% of records, so some of the youngest are still errors. The twin test only finds errors someone later corrected or filed twice; an error nobody touched would pass it.

Surnames point to families. Leaving out the person’s own second entry, 45% of child records share a surname with another adult controller of the same company (50% from age 4), against 19% of the newborn records.

Most of the children hold between a quarter and a half of the shares (3,479 records, including shares held as a trustee or through a firm); 1,329 hold more than three quarters.

What their companies do: property, three times as often as other companies#

Today 1,281 of these records are still current, in 1,073 companies that still exist. 681 belong to children born in 2011 or later, who are 15 or younger this year.

By the first trade code each company gives, letting property or buying and selling it is the business of 28% of these companies, against 9.5% of all 5.7 million live British companies. The register does not record why a child was given a share.

After identity checks began, new child records fell by about three quarters#

From 18 November 2025, Companies House, the British register of companies, made identity verification “a compulsory part of incorporation and new appointments” for directors and controllers. A controller added after that date has 14 days from registration to verify.

In the twelve months to October 2025, children aged 1 to 15 made up about 49.6 of every 100,000 new records (35.9 to 60.9 a month). From December 2025 to September 2026 it was 13.1 (7.2 to 18.9), about a quarter of the earlier rate. The test and its threshold were fixed before the count: a fall to less than half, larger than any swing in the year before.

The controllers aged 90 and over are the comparison: they face the same checks but no barrier tied to age. Their rate stayed almost level, 21.7 per 100,000 before and 21.1 after.

A fall like this could be a delay, if records were filed late. Between two copies of the register thirteen days apart, 18 and 31 October 2026, the months from December 2025 gained 2.0 records per thousand and fewer than ten child records. That cannot rule out longer delays: November 2025 is still gaining records filed almost a year late.

Where the children live#

By the country of residence on the register, most of the children live in England; many records give only “United Kingdom”. Some live abroad, the largest groups in Germany and France.