Hybrid working has moved from a pandemic-era experiment to an everyday part of working life in the UK. Office for National Statistics data for January to March 2025 found that 28% of working adults in Great Britain worked in a hybrid pattern, splitting their time between home and the workplace. That figure has climbed steadily since the ONS began tracking it in early 2022, and it sits alongside a smaller group of fully remote workers who rarely, if ever, set foot in an office.
For employees, this shift is mostly about flexibility: fewer commutes and greater control over the working day. For businesses, however, it raises a more practical question, one that has little to do with laptops or video calls and much more to do with paperwork, official correspondence and how the business is presented. If a company’s staff are scattered across home offices, co-working spaces and the occasional day in a shared hub, where exactly is “the office” for legal purposes? And is that address still a house?
Who is actually working hybrid, and why it matters for company addresses
The ONS breakdown shows hybrid working isn’t spread evenly across the workforce. It’s most common among people over 30, working parents, managers, and those in professional occupations that don’t require constant face-to-face contact. Education level plays a large role too: workers with a degree are far more likely to combine home and office working than those without one. These are broadly the same people who are more likely to be directors, founders or company secretaries. When setting up a company, they often use their home address simply because it is the most convenient address available to them.
That default is worth pausing on. Since the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 took effect, Companies House has tightened the rules on what counts as an acceptable registered office. A registered office address must now be an “appropriate address” under Section 86 of the Companies Act 2006. This means that documents sent to the address should reasonably be expected to reach someone acting on behalf of the company, and receipt of those documents must be capable of being acknowledged. A bare PO Box on its own no longer qualifies, and Companies House has the power to change a company’s registered office to a default address if it isn’t satisfied the company is entitled to use the one it has given.
None of this is an issue for a business with a traditional office. However, it can create genuine complications for the growing number of people running companies from spare rooms, kitchen tables or co-working spaces. This is the same flexible working pattern reflected in the latest hybrid working statistics.
The home-address problem
Every company registered with Companies House must provide a registered office address, which is publicly available on the register. This is intentional, giving HMRC, the courts and others dealing with the company a clear and official point of contact. The trouble is that if a director uses their home as that address, their home appears on the public register too, permanently searchable by anyone. Companies House has been explicit that it does not have the legal power to remove a home address once it’s been used this way, even after the company later moves.
That is not a minor privacy trade-off. A director who works from home three days a week and from an office for the remaining two may not consider their home a business address. Yet a simple Companies House search can make that address visible to customers, competitors or anyone else who looks it up. As hybrid and remote arrangements become the norm rather than the exception, more founders are running into this problem for the first time, often only after their company is already formed and the address is already live on the register.
Where a UK virtual office fits in
This is where a UK virtual office can help. Instead of using a home address, a company can use a commercial address as its registered office. The address can receive and forward official correspondence from Companies House, HMRC and the courts, helping keep the director’s home address private. Used this way, a UK virtual office address gives a hybrid-working founder a credible, professional-looking presence on the public register while keeping their residential details private.
It’s worth being precise about what this does and doesn’t solve. A UK registered office address only needs to meet the Companies Act’s “appropriate address” requirements. It does not have to be a place where anyone actually works, and Companies House makes clear that the registered office does not have to be the company’s main place of business. So a virtual address is a legitimate, well-established option for the registered office itself; it isn’t a way of pretending a company has premises it doesn’t.
For a company still going through UK Limited company formation, this is worth settling early rather than after incorporation, since changing a registered office later means an extra filing and a public record showing the change. Choosing the right address when forming a company, whether a commercial address for greater privacy or the company’s own premises where practical, can help avoid unnecessary changes later.
Registered office vs SAIL address vs trading address
Hybrid working also surfaces confusion between three addresses that sound similar but do different jobs:
- Registered office address — the company’s official address on the public Companies House record, where statutory correspondence from Companies House, HMRC and the courts is sent. Every UK company must have one, and it must be in the same part of the UK (England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland) as the company’s registration.
- Single alternative inspection location (SAIL) — an optional second address a company can use to hold certain statutory records for inspection, separate from the registered office.
- Trading address — wherever the business actually operates day to day. Companies House doesn’t require this to be disclosed and it doesn’t appear on the public register at all.
A hybrid or fully remote team can quite legitimately operate without a single traditional trading address, with employees working from home, co-working spaces or other locations depending on the day. What the law actually requires is only the registered office (and, if used, a SAIL address). Understanding that distinction stops founders from over-thinking a problem hybrid working seems to create but, in registration terms, doesn’t.
What this means in practice
For a business owner setting up now, or reviewing an existing setup, the hybrid-working figures translate into a short, practical checklist:
- Check what address is currently listed as the registered office on the Companies House register, and whether it’s a home address that’s now public.
- Confirm the address meets the “appropriate address” standard — physical, and able to have delivery acknowledged — rather than an unsupported PO Box.
- Decide whether a UK virtual office address better separates the company’s public-facing details from a director’s actual home, particularly where that director splits time between home and other locations.
- Keep the registered office in the correct UK jurisdiction for where the company was incorporated, since it can’t simply be moved to a different nation of the UK.
None of this changes simply because a company’s staff work remotely or on a hybrid basis. However, hybrid working is encouraging more founders to think carefully about the address they use for their company. Services such as BusinAssist can help by providing a registered office address as part of the company formation process, giving directors an alternative to using their home address as the default option.
The bigger picture
The ONS’s 28% figure is a snapshot rather than an endpoint. Hybrid working has become increasingly common since the pandemic reshaped workplace expectations, particularly among professional and managerial workers. As this becomes a normal way for many UK businesses to operate, the administrative side of running a company, including something as basic as its registered office address, needs to keep pace.
Getting the address right when forming a company, or correcting it early if necessary, is a relatively small task compared with running a business. However, it is easy to overlook until a home address is already publicly listed on the Companies House register.
