Data report · July 2026
The State of UK Accountants
We joined the Companies House register with the HMRC anti-money-laundering supervised-business register to build one dataset of 85,555 UK accountancy-related businesses. Most directories rely on a single source. Here is what the joined public record reveals.
About one in 6 "accountancy" companies isn't an accountant
85,555 companies carry a UK accounting, bookkeeping or tax SIC code (69201/69202/69203). But 14,130 of them - about 17% - are something else: law firms, medical-billing and document-storage companies, and dormant shells that picked an accounting code. After filtering those out, 71,425 firms clear a real-accountancy bar. The headline "number of UK accountancy firms" is inflated by about 17% if you trust the SIC code alone.
Thousands of accountants Companies House can't see
15,124 sole-trader and partnership accountants appear on the HMRC AML register but have no Companies House company at all. A directory built on Companies House alone - which is most of them - is simply blind to these firms. Joining the two public sources is the only way to list them.
Firm formations hit a record in 2025
New accountancy-firm incorporations have climbed steadily for two decades.6,069 were incorporated in 2025 - the most in any single year on record, up from 4,629 the year before and about 5 times the 1,215 of 2006. Whatever else is happening to the profession, it is not shrinking.
Cite: 6,069 new UK accountancy firms were incorporated in 2025, a record. Source: Verified Accountants, State of UK Accountants (July 2026), from Companies House. https://verifiedaccountants.co.uk/state-of-uk-accountants
Where the UK's accountants are
London dominates, with more verifiable firms than the next several cities combined.
A long-established profession
Of the 70,430 incorporated firms, only about 21% are under three years old, and nearly half have traded a decade or more - not the fly-by-night picture the "anyone can call themselves an accountant" warning implies.
They file on time
Of the firms whose Companies House filing record we have checked so far (70,133 and rising as our verification runs), 95% have filed their latest accounts on time - a strong signal of an accountable, well-run profession. This figure updates as the check completes across the full register.
On the anti-money-laundering register
40,113 firms in our dataset carry a direct HMRC AML-supervision record. Importantly, this is a floor, not the full regulated picture: firms supervised by a professional body (ICAEW, ACCA, AAT and others) are supervised there and do not appear on the HMRC register at all. We are adding professional-body supervision in a later round, so the true share of supervised firms is higher than this register alone shows.
Method and sources
Built from the Companies House Basic Company Data snapshot (Open Government Licence) filtered to SIC 69201/69202/69203, joined with the HMRC register of businesses supervised for anti-money-laundering. Firms are matched by company number where incorporated, and otherwise by normalised name and postcode; the HMRC register publishes outward postcodes only, so matches are deliberately conservative and counts are floors. Figures reflect the dataset as of July 2026. See also our analysis of UK accountancy firm finances, or explore the underlying records: browse accountants by town, the Xero-certified and registered-auditor directories, or read how we verify every listing.