Data changelog

About this page

This page is a catalogue of the major changes we have made to the data in this Register, in particular to the data available for bulk download in BODS format.

Each entry is a dated set of changes, with an explanation of the changes that were made and any implications they may have for you as a user of our data. Where possible, we'll identify directly which releases of bulk data you'll see these changes in.

9 September 2023

First affected bulk download: 9 September 2023

• Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) have been added as additional identifiers to enabling greater connectivity between international beneficial ownership and corporate ownership datasets.

  This work has been enabled by an existing mapping process between OpenCorporates IDs and LEIs.

  Technical details about mapping Open Ownership Register IDs to LEIs has been published on the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation website.

22 July 2023

First affected bulk download: 22 July 2023

• The monthly download of Register data is now formatted in line with version 0.2 of Open Ownership's Beneficial Ownership Data Standard.

  Up-to-date data mapped from national beneficial ownership registers and other sources is now available per source to download in a variety of formats via our BODS data analysis tools website.

  Historical data from the Ukraine Consolidated State Registry, EITI pilot data and user submitted information has been removed from the Register datasets in order to focus on up-to-date data sources. Functionality for users to submit their own data has been removed.

06 October 2020

First affected bulk download: September 2020

• The Ukrainian Consolidated State Register has recently launched new register software which aims to capture better structured data about beneficial owners of companies. Unfortunately, this comes with a change to the format of their open data which means we cannot currently process it.

  From this update onwards, the Ukrainian data in our register is likely to fall out of date as we do not currently have the resources to investigate the new data, ensure continuity or update our import processes to adapt to the new format. We will keep the existing data in place indefinitely whilst we explore our options.

08 July 2020

First affected bulk download: August 2020

• After a report of duplicate identifiers for UK companies in our output we investigated and realised that we were assigning some company numbers under the wrong identifier scheme. We were also missing an opportunity to output the internal "self link" identifier that Companies House give to Relevant Legal Entities (i.e. intermediate or ultimate corporate owners).

  This affects approximately 28,000 companies from the UK PSC data that were reported as owners of another company and where the disclosure included a 'registration number'. Before, we would output that registration number as a company number under the 'GB-COH' scheme (when the company was declared as being in the UK jurisdiction). Now, we output it under a new named scheme "GB Persons Of Significant Control Register - Registration numbers" - to make it clear that the data is not verified and therefore not directly comparable to the GB-COH identifiers we output from the company numbers identifiying companies' own disclosures.

  In most cases, this simply means that we now output additional identifiers, because we'll also give one under the GB-COH scheme. For total accuracy, you should compare entities via the OpenOwnership register identifiers and remove GB-COH identifiers where they no longer appear in our data.

  In addition, we now output Companies House's internal 'self link' identifiers for all owners, whether legal entity or natural person. We previously did this for all people, and legal entities that had no registration number or were not UK companies. You should simply see more identifiers for some UK companies.

09 December 2019

First affected bulk download: 10th December 2019

• We now include a lot more identifiers in our bulk data output. As well as the existing identifiers for official registers, these should allow users to link entities to source data, OpenCorporates and back to the Register itself. See our documentation for more information.
• We now correctly set minimum and maximum values in interests when we have an exact value. A small change but one that makes us more compliant with BODS.

26th November 2019

First affected bulk download: 28th November 2019

• We now include foreign companies from the Slovakian Public Sector Partners Register (Register partnerov verejného sektora) where previously we skipped them. This means we have around 1,000 new companies and their owners, and in a few hundred cases, these are also linked to entries in other registers.
• We've improved how we identify foreign companies in Slovakian data. This means that some SK companies have changed jurisdiction to other countries, and often we can now match those companies to OpenCorporates where we couldn't before.

5th November 2019

First affected bulk download: 7th November 2019

• We're now regularly importing data from the Ukrainian United State Register of Legal Entities, meaning Ukrainian data is up to date, not just a one-off import from 2018.
• Our data is now openly-licensed as ODC-BY, requiring only attribution, rather than ODBL which imposed a 'share-alike' condition.