Last Updated: 22nd July 2013
What is it?
Identifies a ‘Company’ on the Companies House Register and returns basic company details.
Purpose
Such a URI may be stored and freely exchanged as a company reference that can be used to discover
the latest basic company details. It provides a more efficient way of data linking for users and the
business information industry.
Where is it
The Service is hosted at Companies House but for URI design purposes uses the business.data.gov.uk
domain.
The service is described at
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.shtml
and documented at
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/pdf/uniformResourceIdentifiersCustomerGuide.pdf
A monthly snapshot of all registrations is available on data.gov.uk
Ownership and Licensing
The data is made available by virtue of approvals issued by the Registrar in accordance with section 47 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and Schedule 1 of the Database Regulations (SI 1997/3032).
Companies House imposes no rules or requirements on how the information on the public register is used.
Further details can be found at:
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/ifts.shtml
Scope and Jurisdictions
The URI Set contains ‘Companies’ in the UK. It does not contain businesses that are not companies.
The business.data.gov.uk domain is scoped to ultimately contain URIs for all businesses. There are no plans
to create other URIs apart from companies as yet.
Management
Updates are applied in real time to the URI data as they link to the live register when accessed.
What Standards does it make use of?
The URI Set has been developed following the guidance at
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/designing-uri-sets-uk-public-sector
Formats returned include:
RDF, JSON, XML, CSV, YAML and HTML
Links and Mappings to other Data and Classification Systems
Companies House also offer
A chargeable’ XML gateway’ service, which provides richer information.
Chargeable web based services (CHD and WebCheck), which provide richer information.
Take Up
Companies House report that as at December 2011, they are receiving typically 250,000 hits per week.
Product Support
Unknown.
Potential Future Development and re-use
In 2014 Companies House intend to provide an ‘api’ to lookup a company name, and respond with a result set.
Companies House are working with Ordnance Survey to link a location for a registered office address, but no timescales for delivery are known.