How to strike off a company: the step-by-step DS01 guide (2026)

Striking off — formally, applying to have your company struck off the register using form DS01 — is the cheapest and simplest way to close a solvent UK limited company. The Companies House fee is £13 online, the form takes minutes, and roughly three months later your company ceases to exist.

The catch is that the form is the easy part. The work is in the sequence before you file: telling HMRC, filing final accounts, closing your VAT and PAYE registrations, paying everyone, and — critically — emptying the company before Companies House dissolves it. Anything still owned by the company at dissolution, including the bank balance, passes automatically to the Crown. Directors get this wrong often enough that it deserves the emphasis we give it below.

This guide walks through the whole process in order: eligibility, the pre-filing close-out, filing the DS01, your legal duty to notify people, the Gazette timeline, who can object, and how to withdraw if you change your mind.

What striking off actually means

A voluntary strike-off asks Companies House to remove your company from the register. Once it is removed — "dissolved" — the company no longer legally exists. It cannot trade, hold assets, or be sued in the ordinary way, and its remaining property belongs to the Crown as bona vacantia.

It is designed for solvent companies that have finished their affairs: the contractor winding up after a final gig, the dormant company nobody needs, the small business whose owner is retiring. It is not a way to escape debts. Creditors can object during the process, and a dissolved company can be restored to the register later if someone with a claim pursues it.

If your company cannot pay its debts, strike-off is the wrong route — see our guide to closing a company with debts. And if it is sitting on more than £25,000 of retained funds, a strike-off may cost you significantly more in tax than a formal liquidation; more on that below.

Are you eligible? The three-month rules

Your company can apply to be struck off only if, in the last three months, it has not:

• traded or otherwise carried on business, or sold off stock;
• changed its name;
• disposed for value of property or rights it held for the purpose of selling in the normal course of trading.

There are also absolute bars: the company must not be in (or threatened with) insolvency proceedings — including a petition that has been presented but not yet decided — and must not have a creditors' agreement in place, such as a Company Voluntary Arrangement.

The three-month rule is less restrictive than it sounds. Activity needed to settle debts, conclude the company's affairs, meet statutory obligations and make the application itself is expressly permitted. You can pay your final bills, chase your last invoices and pay your accountant without resetting the clock. What you cannot do is keep trading.

If your company traded recently, the clock starts when trading genuinely ceased — so a company that stopped trading in March can typically file in June. If you are not sure whether your activity counts as trading, our free route check will tell you in a couple of minutes.

Before you file: the close-out sequence

Do these steps in order, and finish them before you submit the DS01. The order matters because of one hard fact: at dissolution, the company's bank accounts are frozen and everything it still owns passes to the Crown.

1. Tell HMRC and file your final accounts and Company Tax Return

Prepare final statutory accounts and a final Company Tax Return (CT600), and send them to HMRC stating that they are the company's final trading accounts to the date it ceased trading. These final accounts go to HMRC, not Companies House. Pay any outstanding Corporation Tax — the normal deadline is nine months and one day after the end of the accounting period — and note that terminal loss relief can be claimed on the final return if the company made losses at the end. An unsettled Corporation Tax position is the single most common reason HMRC objects to a strike-off, so get this squared away first.

2. Deregister for VAT

If the company is VAT-registered, you must cancel the registration within 30 days of ceasing to make taxable supplies, or you risk a penalty. You can cancel online if the business has simply stopped trading, or by post on form VAT7 in certain cases. Submit a final VAT return up to the cancellation date, and account for VAT on any stock and business assets still on hand if you reclaimed VAT on them and the VAT due exceeds £1,000. HMRC's confirmation can take up to around 40 working days, so start early.

3. Close your PAYE scheme and look after your staff

Tell HMRC straight away when you stop employing people. On the final payroll run, submit a Full Payment Submission (or Employer Payment Summary) with "Final submission because scheme ceased" ticked, pay any outstanding tax and National Insurance within 17 days (14 if paying by cheque), and give every employee a P45 on their last day, along with final wages and accrued holiday pay.

Employees with two or more years' continuous service are entitled to statutory redundancy pay, calculated on age and length of service with weekly pay capped at £751 and a maximum payout of £22,530. Closing down is a fair reason for redundancy, but the process still applies — and if you are proposing 20 or more redundancies, collective consultation rules and an HR1 notification kick in.

4. Settle every debt and collect what you're owed

Pay all creditors in full: suppliers, the landlord, the credit card, HMRC. Collect any money owed to the company too — once it is dissolved, debts owed to it become Crown property, and customers who owed you money are off the hook as far as you are concerned. Cancel ongoing contracts, subscriptions and insurance (but keep your employers' liability certificate — see the records section below).

5. Distribute the assets and close the bank account — before you file

This is the step that catches people out. Distribute everything the company owns to its shareholders before applying for strike-off: cash, equipment, intellectual property, domain names, the lot. Then close the business bank account.

At dissolution, anything still in the company's name — including bank balances and even future receipts such as an HMRC refund that arrives after the company is gone — passes automatically to the Crown as bona vacantia, handled by the Government Legal Department. The Crown's stated role is not to correct mistakes or negligence. Recovering the money generally means restoring the company to the register, which after a voluntary strike-off requires a court order — slow, and frequently more expensive than whatever was left behind.

One important tax point as you distribute. On a strike-off, the total taken out by shareholders is only treated as capital (taxed as a capital gain, potentially at 18% with Business Asset Disposal Relief for disposals from 6 April 2026) if the company's debts are settled, money owed to it is collected, and the total is £25,000 or less (CTA 2010 s.1030A). Go a pound over and the entire distribution is taxed as income instead. If your retained funds exceed £25,000, a Members' Voluntary Liquidation preserves capital treatment regardless of the amount — our comparison of strike-off versus MVL walks through the numbers.

Filing the DS01 online

With the close-out done, the filing itself is pleasingly dull. Use the Companies House "Apply to strike off and dissolve a company" service on gov.uk and pay the £13 fee by debit or credit card. A majority of directors must approve the application — the online service handles their sign-off electronically, with each director confirming via the gov.uk service. A sole director signs alone; if there are two directors, both must sign.

A paper DS01 is available if you genuinely cannot apply online. It costs £18 and can only be paid by cheque or postal order — and, in a nicely circular rule, not by cheque drawn on the bank account of the company being struck off (which you have closed anyway, if you followed step 5).

Making a dishonest application is a criminal offence. If the company doesn't meet the conditions, do not file and hope.

The seven-day notice duty — take this seriously

Within seven days of filing, you must give a copy of the application to every interested party. That means:

• members (shareholders);
• creditors — existing and contingent, expressly including banks, suppliers, former employees owed money, landlords and tenants, guarantors, personal-injury claimants, HMRC and the DWP;
• employees;
• managers or trustees of any employee pension fund;
• any director who did not sign the application.

The same duty applies on a rolling basis: if anyone becomes a member, creditor, employee or director after you apply, they must get a copy within seven days of that happening.

The penalties are not symbolic. Failing to notify carries an unlimited fine; doing so with intent to conceal the application from interested parties carries up to seven years' imprisonment, and directors can be disqualified for up to 15 years. A short covering email or letter with a copy of the application satisfies the duty. Send it, keep a record, and move on.

What happens after you file: the Gazette timeline

Companies House registers the application and publishes a first notice in The Gazette inviting objections. If nobody successfully objects within the notice period, the company is struck off and a second notice confirms it no longer exists.

Stage	Timing	What happens
File DS01 online	Day 0	Application registered; £13 fee paid; Companies House acknowledges
Notify interested parties	Within 7 days	Copy of the application to all members, creditors, employees and others listed above
First Gazette notice	Within days of registration	Public notice inviting objections
Objection window	Minimum 2 months from first notice	Anyone with an interest can object with supporting evidence
Strike-off and second Gazette notice	Roughly 3 months from filing	Company dissolved; it ceases to exist

Three months is the realistic minimum from filing to dissolution. Budget closer to six months end-to-end once you include the final accounts, HMRC processing and VAT deregistration that come first. Anyone promising you a faster strike-off is promising something Companies House does not offer.

Objections: who can stop a strike-off, and why

During the two-month window, anyone with an interest in the company can object to Companies House with evidence. In practice, two objectors dominate.

HMRC is the most common. If tax returns are outstanding, Corporation Tax is unpaid, or HMRC simply hasn't been told the company ceased trading, it will routinely object and the application is suspended. This is why step 1 of the close-out comes first.

Lenders are the other. A bank or finance provider with an outstanding loan — Bounce Back Loans being the obvious recent example — will object to protect its position. An unpaid BBL does not quietly disappear with the company; the lender is a creditor, must be notified under the seven-day duty, and can block the strike-off until the debt is dealt with.

An objection doesn't kill the application forever. Fix the underlying issue — file the missing return, settle the debt — and the strike-off can proceed, or you can reapply.

Changed your mind? Withdrawal via form DS02

You can withdraw the application at any time before dissolution using form DS02. Withdrawal is mandatory if the company becomes ineligible after you apply — for instance, if it starts trading again or becomes subject to insolvency proceedings. Leaving an application live when the company no longer qualifies is an offence, so if circumstances change, file the DS02 promptly.

After dissolution: records and loose ends

Once the second Gazette notice appears, the company is gone. Two duties survive it. Keep business records — bank statements, invoices, receipts — for seven years after the strike-off, and keep the company's employers' liability insurance policy and schedule, because former-employee injury claims can surface long after a company closes. If you later discover an asset left in the company's name, recovery means restoring the company through the courts — a good incentive to do step 5 thoroughly the first time.

Closing the right way, in the right order

Strike-off is genuinely something most directors of a simple, solvent company can do themselves: the fee is £13, the form is short, and gov.uk documents every step. The risk is sequencing — filing before HMRC is settled, or before the bank account is emptied. If you'd like a second pair of eyes, our free route check confirms whether strike-off is right for your company in about two minutes, and if you want the whole close-out sequenced and tracked for you, that's what our Guided Wind-Down is for. Either way, the three months will pass at the same speed.