GET persons-with-significant-control query

API Question
#1

Hello,

We are looking into APIs provided by Companies House and have a query regarding GET /company/{company_number}/persons-with-significant-control request.

Would it be possible to get a few either real or mockup responses for this request? Before we register and test API directly, it would be useful for us to look over a few of the response examples in addition to having
the list resource specification. Would you be able to provide examples where:

  1. Entity is owned directly by individual beneficial owner
  2. Entity is owned by 1 or more intermediary entities which are then owned by individual beneficial owners
  3. Entity is owned directly by individual beneficial owner and owned by 1 or more intermediary entities which are then owned by individual beneficial owners

Does the API only return one layer of ownership (and it would be on the user to make iterative calls) or does it return all layers of ownership until the ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) is reached?

Ie. if I look at company 11201576 in the website, the People>PSC only shows 6958119 entity, however, if I open 6958119, then I can see that it is owned by 6959146 which in turn is owned by a natural person. Would the API call return 11201576 > 6958119 > 6959146 > UBO in a response or would it only return 11201576 > 6958119?

Alternatively, is there another API that could return the sequence of ownership in a single call?

Thank you and have a great week ahead.

#2

You can get sample PSC data at their PSC data product page (note - this is a dump of ALL the Companies House PSC data!)

I would just sign up and try out the service to see if it will serve your needs. It is free.

As for tracing the chain of ownership - Companies House is not directly set up to facilitate this. It can (usually) be done but is often more complex than a simple lookup. For more information see the following thread - the link is to my comment but you should check out the whole thread (including answers by Companies House themselves).

Be aware that Companies House is a “recorder” - their job is to record, hold the information provided then make it available to the public. They are not validating and checking it all!

1 Like
#3

Thank you @voracityemail !