Companies House publishes two spreadsheets almost nobody downloads: the ACSPs authorised to verify identities and file for you, and the ones that have lost that authorisation. I pulled the second yesterday and counted the rows.
There are 556.
TL;DR: The Companies House ceased-and-suspended ACSP register holds 556 entries, 168 of them dated August 2026. Suspension is a formal notice of intent to remove, not a caution. If an agent on that list verified your directors, check the file before it blocks a confirmation statement.
What did I find in the ACSP register?
Refreshed on 4 September with data dated 2 September, the file splits 335 "Ceased" and 221 "Suspended" (Companies House ceased or suspended ACSP list, 2026).
The total is the boring part. Sort by status date and the shape appears: 25 in March 2026, 66 in April, 41 in May, 85 in June, 105 in July, 168 in August. At the end of March the register held 85 entries in total. August alone is roughly a third of it now.
I do not know what changed inside Companies House this summer. Whatever it was, they are doing far more of it than in spring.
Why is a suspension worse news than a cessation?
Because "ceased" is a mixed bag and "suspended" is not. Companies House removes ACSP status both when a provider asks and when it fails its legal requirements, and records the two identically. Plenty of those 335 registered early, never used it, and lapsed.
Suspension carries no such ambiguity. Under regulation 17 of the Registrar (Identity Verification and Authorised Corporate Service Providers) Regulations 2025, a notice of suspension must state the registrar's intention to cease the provider after 28 days, give reasons, and explain how to object (legislation.gov.uk, 2025). It is a countdown, not a warning shot, and while it runs the agent cannot file or verify.
So the number to watch is 221, of which 108 carry an August 2026 date. Just under half of every suspension happened in one month.
Does your agent's AML supervisor tell you anything?
Something, though less than the raw figures suggest. Of the 556 removals, 238 are supervised by HMRC rather than a professional body: ICAEW 85, ACCA 85, AAT 66, the SRA 28, the IFA 25, CIMA 7, the CIOT 6. The live register holds 2,187 authorised firms, of which 637 are HMRC-supervised (Companies House ACSP list, 2026). So HMRC-supervised firms are about 29% of the visible population and about 43% of the removals.
I cannot turn that into a failure rate, and I would not trust anyone who did: the live list is opt-in, so the denominator understates the real population by an amount I cannot size. All I will claim is the direction, and it is that firms with a professional body behind them turn up in the removals less often.
What I would check on Monday morning
Search the CSV for whoever incorporated your clients' companies or verified their directors. Four minutes. The checklist I run on every incoming file just gained a line.
A hit does not void the verification, but it stops it being something you assume. Companies House puts it plainly: people verified by an agent that has lost its status "may need to verify their identity again", and it will contact anyone who does (GOV.UK, 2026). I would not wait for that letter. Sorting it now costs an afternoon; discovering it when a confirmation statement bounces costs more.
Most practices parked this when the timetable moved: the ACSP requirement for third-party agents slipped a year, to no earlier than November 2027 (ICAEW, 2026). A slipped deadline reads as permission to stop thinking, and this register is the evidence against that. The same held for mandatory HMRC agent registration and the 2026 AML rules: enforcement arrives before the headline date.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, and how do I check mine is still authorised?
An ACSP is a firm registered with Companies House under ECCTA 2023 to verify identities and file for others, usually an accountant, solicitor or formation agent already supervised for anti-money-laundering. Download both CSVs from GOV.UK and search the firm's name. Absence from the live list proves nothing, since it is opt-in, but presence on the ceased-and-suspended list is definitive.
My company was set up by an agent that has since been suspended. Does my identity verification still count?
The suspension does not cancel it, so there is no need to panic. Companies House says people verified by an agent that has lost its status may need to verify again, and that it will contact anyone who does. No timescale is given, so if your verifier is on the list I would arrange reverification with an authorised ACSP rather than wait for the letter.
Do I have to register as an ACSP to keep filing for my clients, and by when?
If you file for others, yes, eventually. The requirement has moved to no earlier than November 2027, with six months' notice promised. Registration is open now at £55 (GOV.UK, 2026), and I would rather register early than join the queue in the final quarter.
If you want a second pair of eyes on who verified your directors, or on what a suspended agent left in your Companies House record, get in touch. Happy to run the check and tell you whether it needs fixing.