A charge is a document specifying the assets a lender may claim if the borrower defaults on their debt. From these we can therefore see where a UK company has taken out a secured loan.

A mortgage refers to a specific type of charge against a property, whereas a charge is a more general term that refers to any secured debt (including mortgages).

Our charges data is comprehensive from 2001 right up until present day.

As part of this dataset, you’ll be able to see data points such as the date the charge was created, the charge’s status and the charge holder (i.e person entitled to the charge).

As soon as Companies House processes a charge form, we will have the data within 48 hours of it being filed by the company. It is worth noting that there can be a 21 day delay between the creation of a charge and the filing of it, due to Companies House deadlines.

Some monetary amounts on the platform have been converted from a foreign currency. When this happens, the exchange rate used is from the time of the event.

For example, if a fundraising amount was originally in a foreign currency, the exchange rate for the date of the fundraising is used to calculate the amount in GBP. Similarly, for company accounts filed in a foreign currency, the exchange rate will be on the date they were filed for.

We take all companies marked as active on Companies House and create a subset of companies whose last date of accounts is within the last 18 months. We then compare the company’s accounts with one prior, also known as ‘last most recent’ on Beauhurst, and aggregate across a region, industry, or collection.

Any companies who have not filed within the last 18 months will not be included in the subset, nor will companies who are not marked as active on Companies House.

​Why ‘date of accounts’ and not ‘filing date’?

’Date of accounts’ is the date the accounts are made up to, the ‘filing date’ is when they were filed with Companies House e.g. date of accounts are 31st Dec 2022, but the filing date is 30th June 2023.

It takes companies a little while to audit their accounts and prepare them for Companies House, therefore, we can be certain of a set data comparison using date of accounts, and have a consistent and reliable trend. Showing a trend between filing dates would have a more varied set of dates, leading to less consistency and would ultimately be less reliable.

​Why use 18 months as the subset period?

To include the widest sample of company data, we need to be aware of delays in filing. 18 months gives us a large enough window to cover any accounts which have used the maximum period of 6 months after financial year end to file accounts.