There is a section on every UK company's public page that most buyers scroll past. It is called charges.
A charge is a debt with a grip on something.
Someone lent the company money and took a hold over its property — equipment, stock, premises, sometimes simply everything it owns. If the debt is not paid, the holder can act on the thing.
It is free to look at, and it has been on the public record for decades.
What the register shows
Charge details are displayed for every outstanding charge and every part-satisfied one, going back to 1 January 1987. For each you can see who holds it, what it covers, when it was created, and whether it has been satisfied — paid off and released.
Two words are worth learning.
A fixed charge grips a named thing. That oven. That van. That building.
A floating charge hovers over a shifting pile — stock, cash, receivables — and settles onto whatever is there on the day something goes wrong. A floating charge over "all assets" is common, ordinary, and wider than people expect.
🔴 The limit nobody mentions
"Outstanding" does not prove the debt is still owed.
When a charge is repaid, telling Companies House is not compulsory. Plenty of old, long-settled charges sit on the register looking live because nobody bothered to file the release.
So an outstanding charge is a question, not a finding. The answer comes from the holder, not from the register.
The rule almost nobody knows
A charge has to be registered within 21 days, counting from the day after it was created. If that is missed, the law is severe — and severe in an unexpected direction.
The charge becomes void against three specific people: a liquidator of the company, an administrator, and a creditor. Not against the world at large — against those.
And then the part that surprises everyone:
The security dies. The debt does not. It falls due immediately.
A company can look perfectly healthy on Monday and face an immediate demand on Tuesday, and none of that shows up in a profit figure.
What this means when you are buying
It depends on what you are buying.
If you buy the company — its shares — you get the company as it stands, charges and all. They do not fall away because ownership changed.
If you buy the assets, a charge over those particular assets does not evaporate either. Whether a release is needed depends on whether the charge actually covers the things you are buying — which is a question for your lawyer and the charge document, not for the register page.
Either way: what is already promised to somebody else, and who has to sign to unpromise it?
How to look yourself, in five minutes
On find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk, open the company and click Charges. Free.
Read for four things:
- Outstanding or satisfied?
- Who holds it — a bank is one conversation, a private individual another.
- What it covers — named items, or "all assets and undertaking"?
- When it was created. An old charge nobody released may be untidiness, or may not.
Then ask the seller, in writing, for a redemption statement from each holder of a live charge: what is owed today, and what they require to release it.
⚠️ Two more limits. This register covers charges created by companies — a sole trader's borrowing will not be here. And an outstanding charge is not proof of trouble: many ordinary businesses run on secured lending.
What it costs not to look
One click and no money.
The alternative is finding out who has a grip on your equipment at the moment you most need it not to be them.
If you are not in the UK
Most countries publish security over business assets somewhere — a company register, a pledge register, a movable-property register. The question travels: who already has a claim over what I am buying, and what does it take to clear it?
Sources: GOV.UK guidance on searching the Companies House register (scope of charge data); GOV.UK guidance on registering a charge for a limited company (the 21-day period); Companies Act 2006, section 859H, which provides that a charge not delivered in time is "void … against (a) a liquidator of the company, (b) an administrator of the company, and (c) a creditor of the company", and that "when a charge becomes void under this section, the money secured by it immediately becomes payable". Checked 8 September 2026.
What we do. We read the public record behind one business that is for sale and write down what it shows, what it does not, and what no source shows at all — every finding with its source and the date we read it. We do not touch the seller's bookkeeping, and we do not tell you whether to buy.
Read the report before you pay for it. The samples are real reports on real listings with the names changed: €550 reads the public record; €950 also checks the documents the seller gives you against it.
Not sure the registers where you are show any of this? Send the country and a link to the listing. We will tell you what is checkable there and what is not — before anyone talks about money.