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About this site
A reference work on one narrow subject: the 4,506 public limited companies on the UK register. It exists because the question "how many are there" had no sourced answer, and the answer turned out to be more interesting than the question.
Why it exists
Search for anything about public limited companies and you land on pages written to sell company formations. They are not usually wrong on purpose. They are written quickly, they copy each other, and none of them count anything, so a subject with a definitive free public answer is covered almost entirely by guesswork.
The register is right there, published monthly, free, under an open licence. Counting it took an afternoon. Doing that turned up the thing nobody had written down: the number of public limited companies in Britain has fallen every year for a decade, and new incorporations have collapsed. That is a small but real fact about the British economy, and it was sitting inside a spreadsheet attached to a statistical release.
What this site is not
- Not a formations agent. Nothing here sells an incorporation, and the guide to the form tells most readers they should not want one. That advice costs a formations business money, which is roughly why you will not find it on their sites.
- Not legal or financial advice. The law is described and cited so you can read the sections yourself. For your own circumstances, take advice from someone qualified to give it.
- Not a credit reference agency. A status on this site is the status on the register on the date shown, nothing more. It is not a rating, a score, or an opinion on whether a company is sound.
- Not the Companies House service. This is an independent compilation of public data. Filings, officers, charges and accounts live on the official Companies House service, which every company page links to.
Who publishes it
Published by Domain Farm Ltd, company number 13544286, registered in England and Wales. The editor is Sam Allcock, who founded and runs the company and has spent twenty years in digital publishing and public relations. He is not a solicitor, an accountant or a financial adviser, and this site is written on the basis that the primary sources should do the talking: every legal requirement on it links to the section of the Companies Act it comes from, and every number links to the data it was counted from.
Corrections, questions and data requests go to editor@publiclimitedcompany.co.uk. Corrections are read against the register and, where we got something wrong, the change is made and said out loud.
How it is paid for
It is not, yet. There is no advertising, no affiliate link and no paid placement on this site, and no company has paid to appear on it or to be removed from it. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed here and on the page where the money is, before you read the page rather than after.
Using the data
The underlying sources are Crown copyright, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The compiled files here are offered on the same terms. Take them, republish them, build on them. A link back is welcome and not required. If you want a cut of the data that is not published here, ask, and if it is a reasonable amount of work it will be published for everyone rather than sent privately.