Companies House logged 103 new Brentwood companies between 30 July and 2 September. Retail leads on 21, and one High Street first floor took 11 of them.
One hundred and three companies were registered to a Brentwood address in the five weeks to 2 September, and every one of them is still on the register today. That is about three a day, spread across 27 separate incorporation dates.
Twenty of them share three buildings. Eleven went on the register at a first floor office above Brentwood High Street, six at a serviced office on Rayleigh Road, and three at a serviced office on Kings Road. All three sell the same thing: an address a company can use instead of the director’s home.
Those figures come from a Companies House advanced search of every company incorporated between 30 July and 2 September 2026 with “Brentwood” in its registered office address, filtered down to the ones that actually carry a CM4, CM13, CM14 or CM15 postcode (Companies House advanced search).
What the 103 say they do
Companies House asks every new company for a SIC code describing its trade. Grouping the 103 by the first code each one gave:
| Sector | Companies |
|---|---|
| Retail, wholesale and motor trade | 21 |
| Construction and trades | 15 |
| IT, software and media | 15 |
| Consultancy, professional and marketing | 14 |
| Health, care, sport and personal services | 8 |
| Property | 6 |
| Food, drink and hospitality | 5 |
| Finance and insurance | 5 |
| Transport, hire and logistics | 4 |
| Cleaning and facilities | 2 |
| Education | 1 |
| Dormant | 1 |
| Other or not classified | 6 |
Nine of the 103 gave the same single code: 47910, retail sale by mail order or over the internet. That was the most common answer of any. Seven gave management consultancy, six gave software development, and four gave construction of domestic buildings.
Retail leading the table is not a sign of eleven new shops opening on the High Street. Most of that 21 is online selling and small wholesale. The construction and trades figure is the more literal one: plumbing, joinery, glazing, plastering and domestic building, fifteen companies in five weeks, in a borough where extensions and loft conversions fill the planning list week after week.
The three addresses
A registered office is where Companies House and HM Revenue and Customs send post. It does not have to be where the business trades, and for a one-person company it very often is not.
| Address | New companies | Active companies at that postcode |
|---|---|---|
| 105 High Street, Brentwood, CM14 4RR | 11 | 382 |
| 5 Rayleigh Road, Shenfield, CM13 1AB | 6 | 745 |
| 101 to 135 Kings Road, Brentwood, CM14 4DR | 3 | 463 |
| Jubilee House, The Drive, Brentwood, CM13 3FR | 3 | 140 |
The right hand column counts every active company registered to that whole postcode, not just to the one building, so read it as a scale, not a tenant list. Even so, the pattern is clear: four postcodes hold more than 1,700 live registrations between them.
105 High Street is the office of In Front Accounting. Its first floor address is sold as a service from £10 plus VAT a month, and the firm is direct about why people buy it. “Many directors run their business from home,” it says, “but that means your home address is visible to anyone who searches for your company.” The service keeps “your home address off the public record” (In Front Accounting).
5 Rayleigh Road and Kings Road are both CREATE Business Hub, which runs four serviced office sites in Essex, two of them in this borough: Kings House on Kings Road in Brentwood, and 5 Rayleigh Road in Shenfield. It lets furnished offices and co-working desks with “reception and mail handling” included, on contracts with no long-term commitment (CREATE Business Hub).
Neither is unusual and neither is a loophole. Using an accountant’s or an office provider’s address as your registered office is ordinary practice, and it is the only way a director working from a spare room can keep a home address off a public database.
What it means for you
- A Brentwood registered office is not a Brentwood shop. If you are checking a trader, the register tells you the company exists and who runs it. It does not tell you they are based here, or that anyone works at the address on the letterhead.
- The address on Companies House may be an accountant’s. That is normal. It is not evidence of anything, good or bad.
- You can check any of these for free. Search the company name or number at Companies House, and the record gives you the incorporation date, the directors, the registered office and whether accounts are overdue.
- A brand new company has no filing history. Every one of these 103 is weeks old, so there are no accounts to look at yet. For a large job, that is worth knowing before you pay a deposit.
Businesses that do trade from a Brentwood address, with opening hours and locations where we have them, are listed in our Brentwood business directory.
How we counted
The Companies House advanced search returns 107 companies incorporated between 30 July and 2 September 2026 with “Brentwood” anywhere in the registered office address. Four of those are nowhere near here, and they are a good illustration of why the raw number should not be published as it stands:
- two on Brentwood Road in Romford
- one on Brentwood Avenue in Manchester
- one on Brentwood Road in Brighton
Removing them leaves the 103 with a CM postcode used throughout this article. All 103 were listed as active when we checked on 5 September 2026. Note that CM4, CM13, CM14 and CM15 are each shared with a neighbouring council, so a small number of these addresses may sit just outside the borough boundary.
Sources
- Companies House advanced search, companies incorporated 30 July to 2 September 2026 with a Brentwood registered office address, retrieved 5 September 2026
- Companies House, find and update company information
- In Front Accounting, registered office service
- CREATE Business Hub
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