Why does a sole trader record exist for my Limited company?

In the UK, there is no central directory such as Companies House for non-limited businesses (sole traders).

Coverage of sole traders therefore relies on analysis and research using other methods including business directories and regular telephone interviews to ensure the information held on Company Check's database is as accurate as possible.

There are cases where a non-limited company record will exist in addition to a Limited company with the same name.

Most commonly this is due to a newly incorporated Limited company filing a 'non-trading' status. This indicates that the business is continuing to trade as a sole trader since there are no transactions taking place within the Limited company. In such cases the non-limited credit report is more respresentative of that business' credit and financial status. 

Another common reason is that the business traded as a non-limited company before the Limited equivalent was incorporated. At the point of incorporation, Company Check will therefore hold both a non-limited and Limited record.

We strive to provide the most up to date and accurate information available. Every month our analysts do a matching exercise against both the Limited and non-limited database. Where a strong enough match is found (Trading Name, Address etc) the non-limited record is removed. There will be occasions where we cannot match records. If you have found a record that you believe to be incorrect, please let us know.