How to Get Dissolution Alerts from Companies House (2026 Guide)
Companies House's free email alerts don't tell you when a company you're owed money by begins dissolving. Here's every option available in 2026, what each one catches, and how to build a full alert pipeline yourself.
Three months after a customer stops returning calls, the final invoice bounces. A quick search on Companies House confirms what the finance team already suspects: the customer has been dissolved. A First Gazette Notice was published eight weeks earlier. The objection window closed on Monday.
Nobody saw the notice. Nobody objected. The debt is now effectively unrecoverable.
This scenario is common enough that the Insolvency Service's 2025 report treats dissolved-but-owes-money creditors as a standard unsecured class. The objection window exists. It is public and free. The reason creditors miss it is that nobody tells them it has started.
This guide covers every option available for tracking UK company dissolutions in 2026, how to set up the free monitoring yourself, and what each option actually catches.
Quick summary. Companies House's own email alerts do not reliably flag dissolution. Dissolution begins with a First Gazette Notice, published in the London Gazette, and creditors have two months from that date to object using form DS02. To track it yourself, you need to combine Companies House filing monitoring, a Gazette feed subscribed to category 61, and a daily cross-reference against your watchlist. You can build this with an RSS reader and a spreadsheet, or use a tool that does it for you.
What actually happens when a UK company dissolves
Voluntary strike-off is the route about 85% of UK companies take out of existence. Companies Act 2006, section 1003 is the legislation.
The process has four clear stages.
Stage 1: Form DS01 filed. The directors apply to Companies House to have the company struck off the register. This is a filing like any other on the company's public record. Companies House checks eligibility (no trading for three months, no insolvency proceedings, no outstanding legal action).
Stage 2: First Gazette Notice. Companies House publishes a notice in the London Gazette stating that unless a cause is shown, the company will be struck off after two months. This is the starting gun for the objection window.
Stage 3: Objection window. For two months from the Gazette notice date, any creditor, member, or interested party can file form DS02 to object. A valid objection suspends the strike-off. Companies House reviews, notifies the applicant, and usually requires the debt to be settled or a commercial resolution agreed before the strike-off can resume.
Stage 4: Second Gazette Notice and strike-off. If no valid objection is received, a Second Gazette Notice is published confirming the dissolution. The company is removed from the register. Any remaining assets pass to the Crown under bona vacantia.
The only stage that gives you the full two-month window is stage 2. If you catch the dissolution at stage 4, the company is already gone.
Option 1: Companies House free email alerts
Companies House offers a free "follow" feature. Log into find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk, find a company, click "Follow this company," and you receive an email whenever any document is filed.
What it catches. Any filing on the company's record, including the DS01 strike-off application at stage 1 of the process. So in principle, you are notified before the Gazette notice is published.
What it doesn't catch. The emails are identical in format regardless of filing type. Subject lines look like "New filing for ACME LIMITED" for a routine confirmation statement, a change of registered address, the annual accounts, and the DS01. Unless you click every alert and read the document, you miss the ones that matter.
What it doesn't cover. The Gazette is not monitored. If you only learned about a supplier after they went quiet, and by then Companies House has already accepted the DS01 and the First Gazette Notice is live, you won't see it in your follow alerts unless you search the company manually. There is also no monitoring of officer-level data: if a director with a history of phoenix companies is appointed to a customer you follow, the free alert flags the appointment with no context.
Verdict. Free, useful as a backstop, insufficient as a primary control. Credit controllers I spoke to in early 2026 consistently said they had set it up, used it for a fortnight, then stopped reading the notifications. We go into the specific gaps in more detail in Vigil vs Companies House free alerts.
Option 2: Watching the Gazette directly
The London Gazette is the official public record for UK companies. Every dissolution, liquidation, and administration event is published there, with a stable URL and a structured payload.
For dissolution monitoring specifically, the notice category is 61 (Companies: Voluntary Striking Off).
Methods.
Method A: RSS. The Gazette publishes an RSS feed per notice category. Subscribe to category 61 in any feed reader and you will see every voluntary strike-off notice the day it is published. The feed does not filter by company, so you will receive hundreds per day.
Method B: Search UI. thegazette.co.uk/all-notices allows category filtering and company-name search. Useful for ad-hoc checks but not automation.
Method C: JSON API. The Gazette publishes each notice listing page as JSON when you append ?format=application/json. The response includes company number, notice date, notice type, and a stable URL. Polling this on a schedule and matching against a watchlist is what a monitoring tool does.
What the Gazette catches. Every formal insolvency and dissolution event, published the day it occurs. First and Second Gazette Notices, winding-up petitions, appointments of administrators, CVA proposals. This is the canonical record.
What the Gazette doesn't catch. Companies House filings that do not require a Gazette notice. Director changes, charges, filing history. For those, you still need the Companies House API or follow alerts.
Verdict. Free, complete for dissolution and insolvency, but unusable at scale without automation.
Option 3: A DIY monitoring pipeline
If you want to build the monitoring yourself, this is the minimum viable setup. Estimated setup time: one weekend for a developer, one working day for someone comfortable with spreadsheets and Zapier.
Pipeline.
List your watched companies and their Companies House numbers in a spreadsheet. One row per company. Include the company name, number, and any counterparty you associate with it (customer, supplier, matter ID).
Follow each company on Companies House. Filter the inbound alerts into a dedicated email folder. Set a weekly calendar reminder to skim the folder.
Subscribe to the Gazette category 61 RSS feed in a feed reader (Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire). Every morning, scan the new notices and ctrl-F for any of your watched company names.
Once a month, run a manual check on each company via find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk for status, overdue accounts, and new charges. A company that was active six months ago is not necessarily active today.
What this catches.
- Dissolution notices, the day they are published.
- Every Companies House filing, though you have to read each alert.
- Changes in company status, via the monthly manual check.
What this misses.
- Director-level changes across multiple companies. If a customer's director appears as an officer at a distressed company you are not tracking, the pipeline won't surface it.
- Interpretation. The pipeline tells you a document was filed. It does not tell you what the filing pattern typically indicates.
- Weekends and holidays. RSS doesn't wait, but if your daily scan drops to weekly while you're on leave, you may find the Gazette window has closed before you scanned.
Verdict. Workable for a watchlist of under 20 companies if the person running it has discipline. At 50+ companies, manual cross-reference breaks down and misses start occurring.
Option 4: Credit monitoring services
Creditsafe, Red Flag Alert, CompanyWatch, and Dun & Bradstreet offer commercial alternatives.
What they offer.
- Aggregated credit scores.
- A watchlist UI.
- Alerts on status changes, CCJs, and some Gazette events.
What they don't offer, usually.
- Self-serve signup. Most require a sales call and a 12-month contract before you can use the product.
- Granular event coverage. Some include Gazette events, some don't, and the alert copy is typically the raw filing description rather than an interpretation.
- Pricing transparency. The "cheap" tier is rarely shown publicly.
Verdict. Appropriate if you need a full credit risk suite and have a budget in the thousands per year. Overbuilt and overpriced if you want dissolution alerts on 30 suppliers.
Option 5: Vigil (what we do)
Vigil is a monitoring tool that combines Options 2 and 3 and automates the cross-reference. It watches Companies House via their Streaming API, polls the London Gazette for category 61 notices daily, and matches events to the companies and directors on your watchlist. When a match is found, you receive one plain English email explaining what happened and what you can do about it.
For dissolution alerts specifically, the email includes:
- The company name and number.
- The Gazette notice date and the exact deadline for creditor objections.
- A direct link to form DS02.
- A plain English summary of the objection process.
Pricing starts at £27 per month with no contract. Vigil is in early access. Join the waitlist.
How to file an objection (form DS02)
If you are a creditor and a customer's First Gazette Notice has been published, here is the process.
Download form DS02 from GOV.UK.
Complete the company details and your grounds for objection. The standard ground for a creditor is "outstanding debt." Include the amount, the invoice or contract reference, and the date the debt fell due.
Attach supporting evidence. Copies of invoices, statements, and any written acknowledgement of the debt from the company strengthen the objection.
Submit by email to dissolution.section@companieshouse.gov.uk or by post to Companies House, Cardiff. Email is faster and confirmed in practice.
Keep evidence of submission, including any Companies House case reference you receive by reply.
Companies House reviews the objection and contacts the applicant. Valid objections typically result in the strike-off being suspended indefinitely while the debt is resolved. Resolution can mean payment, a formal settlement, or the applicant withdrawing the DS01.
Filing an objection is free. You do not need a solicitor to submit one, though for debts above £10,000 or where the applicant may challenge the objection, legal advice is worth considering.
Common scenarios
Scenario 1: You found the Gazette notice five days before the deadline.
File DS02 immediately. The deadline is the last date Companies House will accept an objection before processing the strike-off. If the objection is received before the deadline, even by a day, it prevents the strike-off from proceeding.
Scenario 2: You found the Gazette notice two months and one day after publication.
Contact the company's directors and request immediate payment. If they refuse, your options reduce to (a) applying for company restoration through the courts, which is expensive and usually not proportionate, or (b) pursuing the directors personally if you have grounds (guarantees, misrepresentation, fraudulent trading).
Scenario 3: The company filed DS01 but the Gazette notice hasn't been published yet.
There is a short delay between Companies House accepting the DS01 and the Gazette publishing the notice. If you see the DS01 on the filing history before the notice, you have more than two months to prepare. Either contact the company to request payment before dissolution, or prepare DS02 in advance so you can file on day one of the Gazette window.
Scenario 4: You monitor 100 companies and can't scan the Gazette daily.
This is where manual process breaks down. Either automate the cross-reference with a script, or use a monitoring tool. The 100-company mark is the rough threshold where a spreadsheet and RSS reader stops being a reliable control.
What to take away
Dissolution begins with a First Gazette Notice, not a Companies House filing alert. Watch the Gazette, not only the filings.
The objection window is two months from the notice date. After that, the company is struck off and debt recovery becomes significantly harder.
Companies House's own email alerts are a backstop, not a monitoring system. Don't rely on them as your only control.
For watchlists under 20 companies, a disciplined manual pipeline (follow alerts, Gazette RSS, monthly check) works. Above that, automate.
Form DS02 is free to file and does not require a solicitor for most creditor objections. If in doubt, file it and let Companies House adjudicate.
Further reading
- Companies Act 2006, section 1003 — the primary legislation on voluntary strike-off.
- GOV.UK guidance on objecting to strike-off — official process and form DS02.
- The London Gazette — search notices by company name or category.
- Insolvency Service 2025 statistics — quarterly insolvency commentary.
- What is Vigil? UK company monitoring explained — how the product works.
Frequently asked questions
Do Companies House's free email alerts cover dissolution notices? Partially. Companies House will send you an email when a company files form DS01, because that counts as a filing. The alert does not identify the filing type in the subject line, does not explain the creditor objection window, and does not cover the First Gazette Notice that starts the two-month clock. In practice, subscribers miss dissolutions because the alerts all look identical.
What is the First Gazette Notice and where does it appear? When Companies House accepts a voluntary strike-off application, a First Gazette Notice is published in the London Gazette confirming the intent to dissolve. The notice states the company name, number, and the date after which the company may be struck off. Creditors have two months from the notice date to object using form DS02. The notice appears at thegazette.co.uk under category 61 (voluntary striking off).
How do I object to a company being struck off? File form DS02 with Companies House. State the grounds for objection, which for most creditors is an outstanding debt. Evidence of the debt (invoice, contract, statement) strengthens the objection. Companies House reviews and either upholds the objection, which suspends the strike-off, or rejects it. The process is free.
Can I watch the Gazette myself for free? Yes. The London Gazette publishes an RSS feed of all notices and a JSON API for filtering by category. You can poll category 61 for voluntary strike-off notices. The challenge is matching notices to companies you care about, which requires a watchlist and a cross-reference step.
What happens if I miss the objection window? After two months from the First Gazette Notice, Companies House strikes the company off the register. Once struck off, the company ceases to exist as a legal entity, and debts owed by it become extremely difficult to recover. Restoration is possible but requires a court application and is usually disproportionate for debts under £10,000.
Vigil is a UK company monitoring tool. If you'd like automatic alerts the day a supplier, customer, or counterparty applies to be struck off, join the waitlist or get in touch.