How to catch up on overdue dormant company filings

By Ben Davies · Updated 26 September 2026

If your dormant company has fallen behind on its filings, you are not alone. It is one of the most common situations we see — the company does nothing, the deadline slips by, and suddenly you are a year or more behind with penalties stacking up.

The important thing: you can fix this. Companies House and HMRC both accept late filings. There is no cut-off point where you lose the ability to file. The sooner you do it, the sooner the penalties stop getting worse.

Check where you stand

Before filing anything, find out exactly what is overdue.

Companies House: Our free Companies House audit reads the public record for you — enter a company number and it lists overdue filings, strike-off risk and ECCTA status in one report. Deadlines are measured from the company's accounting reference date, so that is the date to hold in your head while you work out which periods are missing.

HMRC: HMRC publishes nothing about your company, so your own post is the record. A notice to deliver a company tax return names the period HMRC is expecting a CT600 for; a penalty notice tells you one was missed. Get every letter the registered office has had into date order — the periods and reference numbers printed on them are what a catch-up run is built from. If you are not sure what one of them is, the decoder below will read it for you.

The penalties you have already incurred

Late filing penalties are automatic. They cannot be appealed simply because the company was dormant — Companies House rejects that reason every time, though HMRC is different. If the deadline has passed, the penalty has been issued.

• Companies House penalties range from £150 to £1,500 per year depending on how late you are. They double if you are late two consecutive years. Our free late filing penalty calculator shows the exact figure for your situation.
• HMRC penalties start at £200 for the first day late and rise to £400 once the return is three months late — but that doubled rate only applies to returns due on or after 1 April 2026. Anything that fell due before then carries the old £100, however late it has become, which covers most of what a catch-up run is clearing.

Full details in our late filing penalties guide.

The good news: filing now stops a penalty moving into a higher band. It won't cancel a penalty already charged, but it stops the bill growing and helps you avoid compulsory strike-off.

Can you still file late?

Yes. Both Companies House and HMRC accept late filings at any time. There is no point at which you are "too late" to file. The penalties have already been triggered, but the filing itself will still be processed and recorded.

Filing overdue returns is always better than not filing at all. Not filing risks strike-off, escalating HMRC enquiries, and estimated tax assessments. Filing late draws a line under it.

What order to file in

If you are multiple periods behind, file in chronological order — oldest period first.

Filing oldest first is not a statutory requirement, but it is strongly the right way to do it: each set of accounts carries the comparative figures from the year before, and HMRC's accounting periods line up cleanly when the returns go in chronologically. File the 2024 accounts, then the 2025 ones, and do the same with CT600 returns.

Work through each period in turn, starting from the earliest outstanding one.

How to file multiple overdue periods

For a genuinely dormant company, each period's filing is straightforward. The accounts carry the same balance sheet from one period to the next — often just share capital, or, for a company that traded once, the figures it still holds, unchanged. If there are figures, you start from the ones in the company's last filed accounts, check them and save; each later period you file carries them forward. The CT600 reports zero income and zero tax. There is nothing to calculate.

With DormantFile, each filing takes about two minutes:

1. Add your company (if you have not already).
2. Select the overdue accounting period.
3. Enter your credentials and submit.
4. Move on to the next period.

Three years behind on both filings? That is six submissions — about two minutes each, done in one sitting. Each one is confirmed in your dashboard as it is accepted.

Step-by-step instructions: how to file dormant company accounts and how to file a nil CT600.

After you have caught up

Once everything is filed and accepted:

• Your Companies House record shows up to date. No more "FILING OVERDUE" notices.
• HMRC has your CT600 returns on file. No further penalties for those periods.
• Your company is no longer at risk of compulsory strike-off for missing accounts — as long as its confirmation statement is up to date too.

Now the priority is making sure it does not happen again. DormantFile sends automatic email reminders at 90, 30, 14, 7, 3, and 1 day before each accounts deadline. That is six reminders per accounts filing — enough to catch even the busiest director — and the confirmation statement gets the same ladder, though you file that one yourself. While the HMRC letters are out of the drawer, enter the accounting periods they name: we remind you about any Corporation Tax deadline you add too, and the HMRC side is the half of a catch-up that only ever writes to the registered office. See how it works.

For a full calendar of what is due and when, see our guide on dormant company filing deadlines.

If the company was not dormant for all overdue periods

This is important. If the company was trading during any of the overdue periods — earning income, invoicing, doing business — you cannot file dormant accounts for those periods, and you need an accountant to prepare proper accounts reflecting the trading activity.

If instead the company was simply non-trading but had a significant accounting transaction or two on its books — most often a Bounce Back Loan it was repaying — it can't file dormant accounts for those periods either, but it doesn't need an accountant: you file FRS 105 micro-entity accounts instead, which DormantFile handles alongside dormant ones. At the filing step you pick dormant or micro-entity for each period independently, so you can mix the two across a catch-up run.

If there is any doubt about which periods were dormant, see how to check if your company is dormant. If the company was genuinely trading for some periods, an accountant can advise on those.

If strike-off proceedings have already started

If Companies House has begun compulsory strike-off — you may have received a warning letter or seen a notice in The Gazette — act quickly. Filing whatever is overdue — the accounts, and the confirmation statement if that's late too — is usually what stops a strike-off. Filing the accounts alone won't help if the trigger is a missing confirmation statement or the company has no directors. Companies House generally suspends strike-off action once outstanding filings are received.

If the company has already been dissolved, restoration is possible but significantly more expensive (£341 for administrative restoration, where it is available at all — potentially thousands for court restoration). See our guide on what happens if Companies House strikes off your company.

The sooner you file, the simpler and cheaper it is to resolve. Do not wait.

Key points

• Companies House and HMRC both accept late filings at any time. There is no "too late."
• Filing now stops a penalty moving into a higher band, and filing everything overdue is usually what stops a strike-off.
• File in chronological order — oldest period first.
• For a genuinely dormant company, each filing takes about two minutes. Multiple overdue periods can be cleared in a single sitting.
• Filing doesn't cancel a penalty already charged — only a successful appeal does — but it stops it moving into a higher band.
• If the company was genuinely trading in some overdue periods, you need an accountant for those; non-trading periods with just a loan being repaid can be filed as micro-entity accounts through DormantFile.
• If strike-off has already started, filing everything overdue — the accounts, and the confirmation statement if that's late too — is usually what stops it. Act quickly.
• Set up deadline reminders so it does not happen again.
• How catch-up filing works in DormantFile — every period back to incorporation, oldest-first — is on the catch-up feature page.