A business address service allows your property SPV to use a professional, compliant address on the public register instead of your home. This covers the company’s registered office, your director’s service address, and general business mail. For SPV landlords, it keeps your home details private on company records and meets the “appropriate address” rules that have applied to all UK companies since 4 March 2024. This guide explains what the service includes, what the law now requires, and how to set it up properly from the start.
Set up your SPV’s business address
A compliant UK registered office built for property companies.
Property SPV's business address service at a glance
With our business address service, your SPV stays compliant, and your home address remains private, all in one simple package:
- You get a monitored, physical registered office that meets the required address standard. This is a real address, not a PO Box.
- We provide a director's and PSC service address, so your home address never appears on the public register.
- We handle your business post, including letters from letting agents, lenders, insurers, and tenants, within few days
- Our service covers England, so your address is always in the same part of the UK where your SPV is incorporated.
Why property SPV landlords use a business address service
Most landlords set up an SPV to keep their personal and business matters separate. If you use your home address for the company, this goal is undermined from the beginning. This is especially true if you own several properties through different SPVs, as your home address becomes linked to each one and is easy to find on the public Companies House register.
A business address service helps you avoid this kind of exposure. Your home address stays private, each SPV has a reliable and professional address, and your official mail is handled by people who know how to spot urgent letters from Companies House or HMRC. If you are still planning your structure, start by reading our guide on setting up a property SPV and remember to include the address when you register.
Key Takeaways
A business address service is not one single product. It can cover a company’s registered office, a director’s service address, and a general trading address, and providers do not always bundle all three together in the same package
Since 4 March 2024, every UK company must use an “appropriate” registered office, meaning a physical, monitored location where post will reliably reach someone acting for the company, and PO Boxes no longer qualify.
Using a professional address keeps a director’s or PSC’s home address off the public register, which matters for SPV landlords who may control several companies and would rather not have their residential details searchable against every one of them.
Permission from the address provider must be arranged before incorporation, not after, since Companies House expects evidence of a genuine right to use the address if it is ever challenged.
Non-UK resident SPV owners have particular reasons to use a business address service, since the registered office must sit in the same UK jurisdiction as the company regardless of where the director or shareholder actually lives.
What Is a Business Address Service
A business address service is a paid arrangement with a third party, typically a formation agent, accountant, or dedicated address provider, allowing a company or its officers to use that provider’s address instead of a residential one for one or more official purposes.
The phrase covers a range of products in practice, and the labelling varies between providers, so it is worth being precise about what a given package actually includes before assuming it covers everything an SPV needs.
For an SPV, the appeal is straightforward. Company law requires every limited company to have a registered office, and every director and person with significant control to give a service address, both of which are published on the public register. A landlord running an SPV specifically to separate personal and business affairs tends to find that using a home address for a company appearing permanently on that register undercuts the separation from the outset, particularly where the SPV holds one property among several in a wider portfolio.
The three types of company address (and which an SPV needs)
Two different ideas often get lumped together as “the company address.” Keeping them apart avoids most of the confusion.
Registered office
The registered office is the company’s official legal address, held on the public register, and used specifically for statutory correspondence from Companies House, HMRC, and the courts. It must sit in the same part of the UK where the company is incorporated, so a company registered in England and Wales needs an English or Welsh address, and a Scottish company needs a Scottish one. It does not have to be where the business actually operates from.
Director's and PSC service address
A director’s service address is a requirement distinct from the company’s registered office, though the two are frequently confused because they can be set to the same physical address. Every director, and every person with significant control, must give Companies House a service address for public correspondence about them personally, alongside a usual residential address that is kept off the public register and shared only with credit reference agencies and specified public authorities.
The service address can be the same as the company’s registered office, or it can be somewhere entirely different. A director who runs several SPVs sometimes chooses to use the same third-party address for both the registered office and their own service address, which keeps every public-facing address for every company consistent. In contrast, their actual home address never appears on the register for any of them.
Trading or correspondence address
A trading address, sometimes called a business or correspondence address, is a separate and non-statutory concept covering where general commercial post is received: letters from letting agents, mortgage lenders, insurers, suppliers, and tenants. Many registered office providers handle only statutory correspondence from Companies House, HMRC, and other government bodies. They will not forward this kind of mail, which means an SPV expecting a meaningful volume of ordinary business post may need a broader package, or a second address, to cover it.
Registered office vs Trading address
| Registered Office | Trading Address | |
| Legal Status | Statutory — every company must have one | No statutory requirement |
| Public Register | Always shown | Not shown unless used elsewhere |
| Handles | Companies House, HMRC, court post | Agents, lenders, insurers, tenants |
| Jurisdiction | Must match country of incorporation | No restriction |
| Can be a home address | Yes, if it meets the appropriate address test | Yes |
For a fuller side-by-side, see our explainer on the difference between a registered address and a trading address.
Virtual Office Addresses Explained
“Virtual office” is a commercial term rather than a legal one, and providers generally use it to describe a package that combines an address with services beyond simple mail handling, such as call answering, meeting room access, or a business phone number in addition to postal forwarding.
A virtual office address can, in principle, satisfy the registered office and service address requirements, provided the underlying address itself meets the appropriate address standard described below, but not every virtual office product is set up to do so. Some providers explicitly restrict their virtual office address to general trading correspondence and will not allow it to be used as a statutory registered office at all, so this is a point worth confirming directly with a provider rather than assuming from the marketing description alone.
What the law requires: the "appropriate address" test
Reforms brought in under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act changed what counts as an acceptable registered office. Since 4 March 2024, an address is only “appropriate” if a document delivered there by hand or post would, in the ordinary course of events, come to the attention of someone acting on behalf of the company.
If delivery there can be recorded through an acknowledgement of delivery. Practically, this rules out Royal Mail PO Boxes and equivalent services from other operators, since there is no mechanism for confirming that mail sent there has actually reached anyone connected with the company.
A third party address, including one supplied by an accountant, solicitor, or company formation agent, remains acceptable provided it meets those same conditions and the company has the provider’s permission to use it. Companies House has the power to treat a registered office as inappropriate. It may issue a notice requiring the company to demonstrate that the address is appropriate or to provide a replacement address, normally within a specified period, before changing the registered office to a default address it holds itself.
Once an address has been moved to a default address, the company then has a 28-day compliance period to notify a new, appropriate registered office. Failing to do so within that window is itself an offence and leads to strike-off after Companies House has published a further notice in the Gazette giving two months for the position to be corrected.
The rules for a director’s service address are less rigid: any residential or commercial address in the correct jurisdiction can be used. Still, the same underlying principle applies: it is a public-facing address, and choosing a professional provider rather than a home address is what actually protects a director’s privacy.
Choosing the Right Address Setup for an SPV
Confirm it genuinely meets the appropriate-address test
Rather than being marketed as a registered office service. A provider that mishandles or delays statutory mail creates exactly the risk the arrangement was meant to remove, so it is worth understanding how quickly post is scanned or forwarded and what happens if a time-sensitive letter arrives.
Get the jurisdiction right
A Scottish or Northern Irish SPV cannot use an English registered office, so a provider needs to offer company address in the correct jurisdiction for that specific company, not a London address by default.
Check what a package excludes
Some registered office products are strictly limited to government correspondence, which means a separate arrangement or an upgraded plan is needed to handle general business post from agents, banks, and tenants. For a portfolio landlord running several SPVs, it is worth confirming whether a provider prices per company or offers a portfolio rate, since the same underlying address is often used across every SPV in the structure.
Non-resident SPV owners
The address rules apply to overseas owners without modification. The registered office must still be a UK address in the correct jurisdiction, regardless of where the director or shareholder lives, and there is no exemption for companies whose ultimate ownership sits outside the UK. For an overseas investor with no UK premises, a business address service is often the only realistic way to satisfy the requirement at all.
The VAT trap for SPVs
One distinction is worth flagging separately, since it catches out SPVs that are VAT registered as well as incorporated. A business address service can properly stand in as the registered office for Companies House purposes and as the correspondence address for Corporation Tax, since HMRC writes to whatever address is held as the registered office for that purpose. VAT registration works differently.
For VAT purposes, HMRC generally expects the registered address to be the business’s principal place of business, normally where day-to-day management and operations take place. A registered office or virtual office address will not usually be accepted as the principal place of business unless special circumstances apply. An SPV that is or becomes VAT registered, for example where it has opted to tax a commercial property, needs to use its genuine operating address for VAT purposes even where a business address service is used for everything else.
How to change your company's addresses
Both changes below are quick and free to file, but they are separate entries on the register, so changing one does not change the other.
Changing the registered office (form AD01)
Changing a registered office is done by giving notice to Companies House, most commonly online through WebFiling, and the notice must include a statement confirming the new address is appropriate. There is no fee for the filing. The change takes legal effect once Companies House registers it. For 14 days after registration, a document can still be validly served on the company at the previous address, which is why it is sensible not to close down a previous arrangement immediately after filing.
For the step-by-step, see our guide on how to file the AD01 form.
Changing a director's or PSC service address
Changing a director’s or PSC’s service address is a separate filing from changing the registered office, since the two are distinct entries on the register. Any change to an existing director’s recorded details, including their service address, must be notified to Companies House within 14 days of the change taking effect, and failure to do so without reasonable excuse is an offence.
Our guide walks through how do I change a service address in full.
Set up a compliant SPV address
A business address service solves a real problem for SPV owners: keeping your home address off the public register while meeting rules that have become stricter since the appropriate-address standard came into force. Getting the jurisdiction, permission and mail handling right at the outset avoids compliance problems that are far more disruptive to unwind later.
Property SPV sets up compliant registered office, service and business addresses for property companies across England and Wales, including for non-resident owners, with portfolio pricing for landlords running more than one SPV.
Frequently asked questions
Not quite. A business address is the broader, informal term for any address used in connection with a company. It can include the registered office, a director’s service address, or a general trading address, sometimes all supplied by the same provider. A registered address, or registered office, is one specific statutory requirement: the official address held on the Companies House public register for statutory correspondence. Every company has a registered office, but not every business address a company uses is necessarily its registered office.
It depends which tax the address is being used for. For Corporation Tax, HMRC writes to whatever address is held as the company’s registered office at Companies House. Hence, a compliant registered office or virtual address works perfectly well for this purpose. VAT registration is different. HMRC generally expects the registered address given on a VAT registration to be the business’s principal place of business, normally where day-to-day management and operations take place. A virtual or serviced office will not normally constitute the principal place of business for VAT registration purposes unless the business is genuinely managed from that location. For an SPV, this means the registered office can safely be a business address service, but VAT registration, where relevant, needs the genuine operating address of the business.
A service address is the correspondence address held on the public register for an individual, most commonly a director, company secretary, or person with significant control, rather than for the company itself. It is where public, official correspondence about that person is sent, and it can be the same as the company’s registered office or a different address entirely. It sits alongside, and is distinct from, that person’s usual residential address, which is kept off the public register.
Prices vary by provider and location, and this is typical market pricing at the time of writing rather than a regulated or official figure. A standalone registered office service in the UK currently runs from around £20 to £150 a year, with more prestigious addresses and faster or more comprehensive mail handling sitting toward the top of that range. Packages that bundle in a trading address, call answering, or meeting room access cost more, often billed monthly rather than annually, so it is worth checking exactly what is included before comparing prices between providers.