Stable company identity
The eight-character Companies House number is the canonical identifier and URL. Company names may change and therefore never control the canonical path.
M Methodology
Facts, matches and gaps are different things
BritDB is designed so the interface cannot silently turn missing coverage into a clean bill of health.
Atomic source imports
Official files load into staging tables, receive indexes and record checks, then switch into production only after parsing completes. Users never browse a half-imported snapshot.
Evidence-first matching
Company numbers and regulator-supplied identifiers are definitive. Name and postcode combinations create candidate matches only. Fuzzy name-only matching is never displayed as fact.
Deliberate search indexing
Only canonical active-company, current Scottish-charity and current food-establishment pages enter XML sitemaps. Search results, query variants and later pagination do not compete with entity profiles.
Corrections at the right layer
If the underlying public record is wrong, the original registrar must correct it. BritDB can correct its import, matching, labels or presentation and always provides the source link.
Privacy-preserving visit counts
BritDB counts human page views and daily unique hosts without cookies. IP addresses are converted to a one-way keyed hash and are never stored in raw form; known crawlers and monitoring tools are excluded.
Financial facts stay source-limited
BritDB parses supported facts from electronically filed iXBRL/XBRL accounts, preserves the reporting period and source batch, and keeps missing values distinct from zero. Figures are company-filed and are not audited by BritDB.
Control data stays on the company profile
PSC entries are joined only by the exact Companies House number. BritDB does not create separate indexable pages for people, and deliberately omits service addresses and partial dates of birth from the public interface.
England and Wales charity links require an official company number
The Charity Commission register is imported in full, but a company profile is linked only when the Commission itself supplies the exact Companies House registration number. Similar names or addresses are not enough.
Scottish charities keep their own identity
The OSCR current register and five-year annual-return extract are published on canonical SC-number profiles. The bulk fields do not include a Companies House number, so BritDB does not infer company links from names or addresses and does not claim to be the Scottish Charity Register.
Food ratings stay independent
Food establishments use their official FHRSID and are not joined to Companies House by name. BritDB preserves the scheme, rating date and local-authority context, and displays the snapshot date because an official rating may change.
Sanctions links need jurisdiction evidence
The complete UK Sanctions List is retained, but company profiles are linked only through an exact identifier in the official business-registration field and evidence that it is a Companies House number. Names are not used to create links. A report with no exact link is not sanctions clearance because restrictions may apply through ownership or control.
Payment reports remain company-submitted disclosures
Payment Practices reports are linked only by the source Companies House number. BritDB keeps the filed reporting period, flags internally inconsistent dates and presents the figures as statutory disclosures rather than audits, credit scores or guarantees of future payment behaviour.