Registered office address explained, and why it matters more than people think
Your registered office address is where official correspondence, HMRC letters, legal notices, gets sent, and it’s published on the public Companies House register for anyone in the world to look up. That last part surprises a lot of first-time founders.
Can you use your home address
Yes, plenty of small companies do exactly this, especially in year one. The trade-off is that your home address becomes permanently searchable on a public register, which some people are genuinely uncomfortable with once they realise, particularly if you work from home and don’t love the idea of that address being public.
The alternative: a registered office service
Several providers offer a registered office address for a small annual fee, your official correspondence gets forwarded to you (usually scanned and emailed) while your home address stays private. This is a common and genuinely sensible choice for anyone not comfortable with the public register issue.
Does it need to be where you actually work
No. Your registered office is purely an administrative address for official correspondence, it has no bearing on where you actually run the business day to day, which can be anywhere, including entirely from home even if your registered office is a separate service address.
The honest recommendation
Comfortable with your home address being public and don’t mind official post arriving there: use it, it costs nothing. Prefer privacy, or don’t want business correspondence mixed with home post: a registered office service is a small, worthwhile cost.
Some links here are referral links, if you sign up we may earn a fee at no cost to you, it never changes the order we list things in. Fees and terms change, always check Companies House and the provider’s own site for the current numbers. This is information, not legal advice.