Vincent
How Check works
You describe a business, or name a registered company, and Vincent lists the government obligations that apply to it: licences, registrations, filings, certificates, safety duties and taxes, from national rules down to the council.
Where the list comes from
The list is computed from a map of 953 obligations, 264 activities that trigger them, 197 business types, every Companies House SIC code and 382 councils. Every item links to its official source, most often GOV.UK, with the date we last checked it: 27 Sept 2026 for this version of the map.
What we guess, and what we ask
A business type comes with the things most businesses of that type do. We pre-answer those and mark them “we guessed”; one tap changes any of them. We ask only questions that change the list, and never more than seven at once. “Not sure” keeps the item on the list, marked “check this”.
A free-text description (“a café in Bristol”) is read onto the map by a language model that can only choose among the types and activities we hold. It never writes anything on the page; it picks. The line at the top says what it picked, and “Not quite?” lets you change it.
Registered companies
For a company number or name, we read the public register: name, status, SIC codes, registered office, the next confirmation statement and accounts dates, and the directors' identity-verification deadline. We never show who the directors are. The registered office is often an accountant's address, so we ask before assuming the council.
What we don't do
We never tell you that a licence isn't needed. Where the sources give us nothing for your answers, we say we found no requirement based on them. Fees and processing times appear only where an official source states them; many are set by each council. None of this is legal advice.