Report 01 · DoctoriumGP Intelligence

Companies House Extraction Strategy

Free Companies House API + Endole £39/month gives the prospect spine. Endole exposes the financials abridged accounts hide.

~5,385 words · Source-cited · Updated 26 April 2026 · 01-companies-house

Author: Claude (research run, 2026-04-25) Target segment: Owner-operator MDs of profitable UK private limited companies, age 45-65, male, registered within ~45 minutes of Derby (DE postcodes plus DE13/14, NG, ST14 and parts of LE). Use case: Cold B2B outreach for £2,499 baseline / £4,999 annual men's longevity service.

1. What Companies House actually gives us (free)

The Companies House Public Data API is free, requires a registered developer account and an API key, and is accessed over TLS 1.2+. (CH Developer Guidelines)

Rate limits

Officer record fields (the prospect data)

The officerList resource returns per-director: name, officer_role, appointed_on, resigned_on, address (correspondence, not residential), nationality, country_of_residence, occupation, identification, and a date_of_birth object containing only month and year (integers) — never a full DoB. (CH Officer List spec)

For directors appointed after 10 October 2015, only month + year of birth is exposed publicly (full DoB sits on a private register accessible to police and credit reference agencies). (Companies House privacy update; GOV.UK personal information guidance)

Implication: Year-of-birth is enough to derive age band (45-65 = born 1961-1981). Sex is NOT a field — must be inferred from forename (~95% reliable for British forenames, lower for ambiguous or foreign names — INFERRED, no published accuracy figure for this exact use case).

What financials are exposed for small companies

Small companies and micro-entities can file abridged or filleted accounts, which legally allow them to omit turnover, gross profit and directors' remuneration from the public record. Only the balance sheet is filed. Thresholds (financial years from 6 April 2025): turnover ≤£15m, assets ≤£7.5m, ≤50 employees — meet two of three to qualify as small. (GOV.UK small company accounts guidance; Hillier Hopkins guide)

The proposed 2027 reform that would have forced full P&L disclosure was paused in January 2026. (Rapid Formations)

Major consequence for prospecting: the £2-10m turnover band is exactly the band that qualifies as "small" and therefore can legally hide turnover. From Companies House data alone you can typically see only: - Net assets / shareholders' funds (proxy for retained wealth) - Cash at bank - Debtors / creditors - Fixed assets - Number of employees (often disclosed in notes)

To get turnover and profit you need either Endole/FAME (which buy and structure full accounts) or to filter on net assets as a proxy. INFERRED rule of thumb: net assets >£500k + ≥10 employees + still trading = good chance of £2-10m turnover for the typical owner-operator profile.

Free Company Data Product (bulk download)

Companies House publishes a free monthly snapshot of every live company as zipped CSVs. Includes company number, name, registered address (with postcode), SIC codes (up to 4), incorporation date, accounts filing dates, status. No officers, no financials. (CH Free Company Data Product; GOV.UK data products)

For a postcode-targeted run this is the right entry point — filter the CSV locally first, then hit the API only for the filtered companies' officer lists. Cuts API call volume by ~99%.

Advanced Search (browser, no API key needed)

The Companies House Advanced Search lets you filter by partial postcode (e.g. DE), SIC code, incorporation date, and status simultaneously. Exports up to 5,000 companies per CSV. (CH Advanced Search; CH Blog announcement)

This is the fastest way to get an initial Derby-area company list with zero engineering.

2. Hard prospect counts — DE postcodes and adjacent

Overall regional context

DE postcode-specific

No published official count of active limited companies by postcode area. ONS publishes only at LAU/county level and ONS BRES/IDBR data does not slice by postcode. Companies House Advanced Search will return the actual live number on demand.

ESTIMATED Derbyshire DE-postcode active companies: ~95,000-110,000. Reasoning (INFERRED): Derbyshire = 120,321 total, but DE postcodes also bleed into Burton (Staffs) and small bits of Notts/Leics. Net effect roughly cancels — assume 95-110k as a working figure. To get the exact number, run the Companies House Advanced Search with DE as postcode prefix; this will give the answer in under 60 seconds.

£2-10m turnover sub-segment

No public dataset slices business count by both postcode and turnover band. The ONS UK Business Activity, Size and Location 2025 release confirms breakdowns are by employee size band and turnover band, but at NUTS regional level only. (ONS UK business 2025 bulletin)

ESTIMATED £2-10m-turnover companies in DE postcodes: 1,800-2,800. Working: UK has roughly 36,400 medium-sized employer businesses (50-249 employees) and roughly 215,000 small employer businesses with 10-49 employees (Funding Agent). The £2-10m turnover band approximately maps to 10-50 employees. Derbyshire's share of UK businesses by company count is ~1.0%. Apply that to the 215k small employers gives ~2,150 in Derbyshire alone. Adjust for DE postcode coverage and add Burton DE13/14 → 1,800-2,800. This is INFERRED — no source published the exact number.

Adjacent postcodes (within ~45 min of Derby)

Total addressable male director-records, age 45-65, in 45-min radius

ESTIMATED 18,000-28,000 unique male directors aged 45-65 across the full geography (DE + DE13/14 + NG + ST14 + reachable LE), filtered for active limited companies with ≥10 employees and £2-10m turnover.

Working: ~5,000-7,000 target companies × ~3 directors per company × ~60% who are men in the 45-65 band (after de-duplication for directors of multiple companies). This is INFERRED — confirm by running the actual extraction. The Companies House Advanced Search + free data product will collapse this estimate into a real number in a single afternoon.

3. SIC code targeting — owner-operator wealth concentrators

East Midlands sector mix from HitHorizons (n=662,727 with sector data):

Sector EM count EM share Owner-operator wealth fit
Wholesale/Retail (SIC 45-47) 103,965 15.2% High — distribution, builders' merchants, motor trades; lots of owner-operators with £2-10m turnover
Science / professional (SIC 69-75) 87,844 12.8% High — accountants, solicitors, consulting engineers; partner-shareholders typically 45-65
Construction (SIC 41-43) 72,569 10.6% Very high — Derby has Bowmer & Kirkland, Bloor Homes, Miller Homes, Clowes Developments anchoring the sector (Univ. of Derby Top 200 2025)
Administrative / business support (SIC 77-82) 68,428 10.0% Mixed — hire/lease and facilities skew owner-operator; staffing more PE-owned
Real estate (SIC 68) 53,990 7.9% Very high — property developers + landlords, dividend-rich, classic 50-something male profile
ICT (SIC 58-63) 46,241 6.7% Medium — tech founders 45+, but many bootstrapped tech are sub-£2m
Transportation / logistics (SIC 49-53) 43,630 6.4% High — haulage owner-operators around DE65/DE13/Castle Donington, dividend-distributing
Manufacturing (SIC 10-33) 36,107 5.3% Highest fit for Derby — Rolls-Royce supply chain, Toyota Tier 2/3, JCB-adjacent. (Univ. of Derby Top 200 2025)

(Source: HitHorizons East Midlands stats)

Recommended SIC priority order for DoctoriumGP men's longevity: 1. 41-43 (Construction) — high cash, lifestyle stress, dividend-rich, very male, 45-65 skew. Highest hit rate. 2. 45-46 (Motor trades + wholesale) — classic owner-operator, dividend-distributing. 3. 49-53 (Transport & storage) — haulage MDs, weight/cardiovascular risk concerns map directly to longevity offer. 4. 10-33 (Manufacturing) — Rolls-Royce / Toyota / JCB / Alstom supply chains. Engineering MDs respond well to "data-driven" framing. 5. 68 (Real estate) — property developers, classic profile. 6. 69-75 (Professional services) — accountants, solicitors, surveyors. Higher health literacy = easier sale of premium service.

Avoid for cold: SIC 86-88 (health/social work — competitors), SIC 84 (public admin — not the buyer), SIC 87 (residential care — owner-operators but margin pressure).

ONS UK Business Activity, Size and Location 2025 publishes the official SIC × region × employment-band tables. The bulletin page is the index; the full tables are the deep data. (ONS bulletin)

4. Enrichment vendors — actual pricing

Apollo.io

Endole

Verdict: Endole is the single best-fit UK paid layer. £39/month gives you turnover figures Companies House withholds for small companies, plus 1,000 enriched exports — enough to feed a 30-day pilot.

Bureau van Dijk FAME

DueDil

Lusha

Hunter.io

Clay.com

OpenCorporates API

"Companies House Ledger / CHsearch / Endole API" alternatives

Niche third-party wrappers (e.g. globaldatabase.com, datagardener.com, Zephira, The Companies API) repackage Companies House plus their own enrichment. None offer materially better UK coverage than going direct + Endole. Listed as alternatives for buyers who don't want to build. (Top 5 CH API alternatives)

Recommended stack for DoctoriumGP men's longevity

5. Competitive intelligence — UK private clinics doing this

No published case studies of UK private clinics running B2B prospecting from Companies House. The medical aesthetics, longevity and executive health space is dominated by: - Referral / GP / consultant networks (Echelon Health, HCA Executive Health, Lanserhof at The Arts Club). - Concierge medicine memberships sold via private banks and law firms (Bupa Health Clinics, Spire Cinical+, Numan for men's health DTC). - Direct social media + Meta ads (Manual, Forth, Optimallyme).

Searches against ASA rulings and CAP advice surface no clinic-specific cold-B2B-to-directors case. INFERRED that no clinic has publicly documented this approach — likely because: 1. Larger chains have referral economies that don't need cold extraction. 2. Smaller clinics use Meta/Instagram and consumer DTC funnels. 3. The few who try it don't write about it (competitive moat).

This is an open lane. No competitor playbook to copy from — but also no proven blueprint. Test fast.

Regulatory layer for medical cold outreach

6. ICO / GDPR / PECR — what's lawful

Companies House data and GDPR

Public availability does NOT exempt the data from UK GDPR. Director name + DoB month/year + correspondence address is personal data even though publicly filed. Processing it for marketing requires a lawful basis. (ICO B2B marketing)

PECR — corporate vs individual subscribers

Under PECR, a limited company is a "corporate subscriber". You can email a limited company without prior consent or soft opt-in. (ICO electronic mail marketing)

BUT the moment you email a named director (e.g. john.smith@acmebuilders.co.uk), that named contact is also personal data and UK GDPR applies in parallel. PECR consent rules don't trigger, but UK GDPR lawful-basis rules do. (Hybrid Legal B2B cold outreach guide)

Important 2025 update: the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 came into law on 19 June 2025. ICO's full guidance is under review. (ICO B2B page noting review)

Lawful basis for B2B cold to named directors

Use legitimate interests with a documented Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA). The ICO three-part test: 1. Purpose test: is there a legitimate interest? Yes — promoting a relevant business service to a business decision-maker. 2. Necessity test: is processing necessary? Yes — directly emailing the buyer is the most efficient route. 3. Balancing test: does it override the individual's rights? For business email at business address about a product relevant to their role — typically defensible. (ICO legitimate interests)

Mandatory operational requirements

7. Pre-filtered free intelligence sources

Sunday Times Rich List 2025

Published 16 May 2025 (online) / 18 May 2025 (print). Derbyshire entries include: - Lord Anthony Bamford & family (JCB): £9.45bn, +60% YoY. Rocester (ST14) HQ — borderline reachable from Derby in 35 min. - John Bloor (Bloor Homes / Triumph Motorcycles), 78: £2.079bn (2025) — 85th richest in UK, +£804m YoY. - David Clowes (Clowes Developments / Derby County FC): ~£330m. - Mike Ashley (Sports Direct, Newcastle): £3.83bn — Derbyshire registered. - Melvyn Morris CBE: £312m (former Derby County chair, King.com investor). - Harold Martin & family (HW Martin, Alfreton): £274m. - Peter Gadsby (Ashbourne, property): £200m. (Sunday Times Rich List 2025 — Wikipedia; Derbyshire Times Rich List 2024; Express & Star Midlands Rich List 2025)

These are top-of-funnel referrers, not direct prospects (mostly above the £4,999 membership ceiling and likely already in concierge medicine). But the layer beneath them — directors at Bloor's, JCB's and Clowes' supply chain — is exactly the target.

University of Derby Top 200 Derbyshire Businesses 2025

Free, public, ranked by turnover, compiled from Companies House + FAME. Period 1 July 2023 - 30 June 2024. - Top of list: Toyota, Alstom, Rolls-Royce, Miller Homes, Bowmer & Kirkland, Bloor Investments. - Big risers: Loram UK (railway track maintenance, Derby) up 48 places to 150th; Lomas Distribution up to 60th; Quest Global Engineering +41; Noon Foods +38. - Sectors dominating: transport, manufacturing, property, construction. - (University of Derby Top 200 2025; Derby news release; Derbyshire Times coverage)

This is the single most valuable free pre-filtered list. 200 names, all turnover-ranked, all Derby-area, all named MDs. Cross-reference with Companies House officers → instant top-tier hit list.

Insider Media — Midlands rankings 2025

Insider publishes (not free, but accessible via subscription / library): - Midlands Top 500 — combined £183.5bn turnover, +3.9% YoY; profits down 1.1% to £11.5bn. - Midlands SME 300 — best small/medium performers. - Midlands Owner-Managed Top 100 — shareholder-controlled, exactly the segment. - Midlands Family Top 50. - Made in the Midlands Awards. - (Midlands Top 500 2025; SME 300 2025; Owner-Managed 2025; Family Top 50)

The Owner-Managed Top 100 and Family Top 50 are best-fit for the longevity-buyer profile. Subscription circa £200-400/year.

East Midlands Top 200 2025 (Grant Thornton + EMC)

Grant Thornton publishes a Top 200 East Midlands fastest-growing companies report annually. 2025 PDF is at grantthornton.co.uk. Names regional projects (Trent Arc, Canal Corridor, Supercluster) and lists fastest-growing privately-held EM companies. (Grant Thornton East Midlands 200 2025)

Derbyshire Live / Derby Telegraph / Derby World rich lists

Publish annually (free). Built off Sunday Times Rich List + local extras. 11 names typically. (Derbyshire Times Rich List 2023; Derby World wealthiest people)

Derbyshire Life magazine

Monthly society/wealth magazine. Profiles, country house features, interviews. Useful for soft intelligence (who plays at which golf club, who hunts, who chairs which charity). No direct list of "wealthy men aged 45-65" — INFERRED that this needs manual scraping. Subscribe and treat as background.

Charity Commission filings

Free, public. Search at register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk. Full annual returns include named trustees + their occupations + addresses + sometimes "donation received from X". Top-end Derbyshire-registered charities (Derbyshire Community Foundation, Derby Cathedral, Padley Group, etc.) list their major donors in trustee reports. (Charity Commission register search)

Tactic: scrape donor lists from accounts of high-profile Derbyshire charities. Cross-reference with Companies House officer list. High-net-worth + philanthropically active = ideal longevity prospect (engaged, status-conscious, buyer of premium services).

Sunday Times Tax List

The Tax List ranks individuals by tax paid. Annual. Useful for confirming who's actually high-income (vs paper net-worth). Few Derbyshire-specific names appear annually — Bamford, Bloor are perennials.

8. The actual extraction workflow — step by step

Pipeline overview

[1] Companies House Free Data Product (CSV, monthly snapshot)
        |  filter locally: postcode prefix in (DE, NG, ST14, LE6, LE12, LE65, LE67)
        |  + status = "Active"
        |  + SIC in {41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 52, 53, 68, 69, 70, 71, 25, 28, 29}
        v
[2] Companies House Advanced Search (browser, sanity check + manual pulls)
        |  optional — for ad-hoc targeting in <60 sec
        v
[3] Companies House API: /company/{number}/officers
        |  rate-limited: 600 req / 5 min / key
        |  collect: name, DoB month+year, occupation, nationality, role, appointed_on
        |  filter: officer_role = director, resigned_on = null
        |  filter: year_of_birth in {1961...1981}
        |  filter: forename in male-name dictionary
        v
[4] Companies House API: /company/{number} + /company/{number}/filing-history
        |  pull latest accounts; check small-company status
        |  if NOT abridged: extract turnover, profit, employees from accounts XBRL
        |  if abridged: keep net assets, employee count from accounts notes
        v
[5] Endole API (£39/mo) — turnover + profit fill-in
        |  for the 70%+ that filed abridged
        |  + credit score, CCJs (suppress at-risk firms)
        v
[6] Filter: net assets >£500k OR turnover £2-10m (via Endole)
        |  + employees ≥10 (via Companies House notes or Endole)
        |  + still trading (no recent strike-off proposal)
        v
[7] Hunter.io ($34/mo) — domain-pattern email
        |  build company website list from registered office
        |  pattern: firstname.lastname@domain
        |  verify with Hunter's verification step
        v
[8] Lusha ($29.90/mo) — direct reveal where Hunter fails
        |  fallback for the ~30% Hunter misses
        v
[9] LinkedIn manual cross-reference (Sales Navigator £79.99/mo if going hard)
        |  confirm the named director is still active in role
        |  capture "looks ~50-60 + male" from photo
        |  optional: send connection request first, then email
        v
[10] CRM ingest — Klaviyo + a B2B CRM (Pipedrive £14.90/user/mo or HubSpot Free)
        |  segment by: company SIC, employee count, turnover band, director age band
        |  build LIA documentation in CRM record
        v
[11] Outreach via Instantly.ai (£24/mo) or Smartlead — multi-domain warmup, sequence
        |  educational framing per ASA / GMC rules
        |  unsubscribe link mandatory; suppression list maintained

Tooling cost summary

Tool Monthly cost
Companies House API + Free Data Product £0
Endole subscription £39
Hunter.io Starter (annual rate) ~£27 ($34)
Lusha Pro ~£24 ($29.90)
LinkedIn Sales Navigator (optional) £79.99
Pipedrive Essential (or HubSpot Free) £14.90
Instantly.ai sending £24
Core stack total £128.90/month without LinkedIn; £208.89/month with

Domain costs (warmup domains for cold sending): £25-50 one-off, then £8/year per domain. Plan for 3-5 sender domains × 5 mailboxes each.

Realistic time-to-extract

5,000 enriched prospects = ~3-4 weeks of work for one operator using the stack above.

Breakdown: - Day 1: download CH free data product, write filter script, output ~8,000 candidate companies. (~4 hours.) - Days 2-3: pull officer lists via API. At 600 req / 5 min the API can do ~170k req/day; 8,000 companies × 1 req each = trivial. Officer filtering (age, sex) script: ~3 hours. Outputs ~15,000-20,000 director records before financial filter. - Days 4-8: Endole enrichment for turnover/financials on the 8,000 companies. With 1,000-export/month allowance you'll need either to upgrade to bulk pricing or batch over two months. (~2 weeks at standard tier.) - Days 9-15: email enrichment via Hunter + Lusha. Manual review for top 500 (LinkedIn cross-check). (~1 week.) - Days 16-21: CRM segmentation, LIA documentation, copy variants, sender domain warmup. (~1 week.) - Day 22+: launch.

Faster path: if you skip the £2-10m turnover filter and just go on net assets + employee count, you can compress to 10 days but you'll waste budget on companies that turn out to be sub-£1m.

Output format / target counts

This is the realistic 30-day pipeline. Run quarterly = ~14,000/year. Plenty for a £4,999 membership product targeting 0.5-2% conversion = 70-280 paid members/year at the ~5,000 acquisition baseline.

Key numbers (for the strategy doc)

Metric Value Source / status
East Midlands active companies 685,752 HitHorizons 31 Mar 2026
Derbyshire active companies 120,321 HitHorizons
Nottinghamshire active companies 142,916 HitHorizons
Leicestershire active companies 165,986 HitHorizons
East Midlands SMEs 100,300 Funding Agent / GOV.UK
EM business growth 2024→2025 +13% (~45,000) GOV.UK BPE 2025
Companies House API rate limit 600 req / 5 min CH developer docs
CH director DoB exposure month + year only CH privacy policy
Small-company turnover hidden up to £15m turnover GOV.UK accounts guidance
Estimated DE postcode active companies 95,000-110,000 INFERRED
Estimated £2-10m turnover firms in DE postcodes 1,800-2,800 INFERRED
Estimated extractable male MDs 45-65 18,000-28,000 across full radius INFERRED
Realistic enriched prospects per 30-day cycle ~3,500 INFERRED from pipeline
Core tooling cost £128.90/month calculated

Sources

End of report.