How do you keep your home address private in the UK?
You keep a home address private in the UK by closing the public records that carry it, then controlling what the household gives away. Opt out of the open register, the version of the electoral register anyone can buy. If you are a company director, give Companies House a service address that is not your home, and apply to remove your home address from filings where it already appears. In England and Wales, check the address for service on your Land Registry title, which anyone can download. Ask people-search sites to remove their entries, and ask your architect what a planning application will publish before it is submitted. Then look at what leaves the house: parcels, staff and contractors, geotags, house numbers in photographs, school uniforms, holidays posted while you are away. None of this makes an address invisible. Neighbours and friends still know it, and the full electoral register still holds it. These steps make it hard to find for anyone who does not already know it.
The electoral register and Companies House
The open register. The electoral register comes in two versions. The full register is used for elections and for checks such as credit applications. The open register can be bought by any person, company or organisation, and you are in it unless you ask to be taken out. Opt out at any time through gov.uk or by writing to your council’s electoral registration office. It does not affect your right to vote or your credit rating.
Companies House. A director gives Companies House two addresses. The home address goes on a private register; the service address goes on the public one, and can be the company’s registered office. The exposure comes from using home as the service address, or as the registered office of a company run from the house. Form SR01 asks Companies House to remove it from each filing, at £34 a document. First put a replacement service address in place or, where home is the registered office, move the registered office. Once removed, the address shows only the first half of its postcode.
Credit reference agencies. Directors’ home addresses are also shared with credit reference agencies. A director at serious risk of violence or intimidation because of the company’s activities can apply, for £100, to stop that.
Property: the Land Registry and planning applications
In England and Wales, anyone can download the title register of any property for £7. It usually shows who owns it, what they last paid, whether there is a mortgage, and the owner’s address for service. The name and the price stay on the public register; the address for service is yours to choose. Up to three can be entered, at least one of them postal, and none need be the property or in the UK; a “care of” address is accepted. Changing it on form COG1 costs nothing. Check every property you own: a second home’s register can carry the address of the first. Scotland and Northern Ireland keep their own registers.
Planning applications are the other property record. Almost every council keeps its planning register online. The register holds a copy of each application and its plans, so the site is always public; whether the applicant’s name and address appear beside it is for each council to decide, and some publish them with the application documents. Before anything is submitted, ask your architect or agent what your council publishes, and whether contact details can go through their office. Some councils ask applicants to keep personal data out of documents rather than request its removal later.
People-search sites and the right to erasure
People-search sites build their listings from public sources. 192.com, for example, publishes open register, Companies House and telephone directory records, and takes removal requests online or by post. Opt out of the open register first, or a later edition can bring the entry back. Then search your name and address on other directory and property sites as a stranger would, and ask each to remove what it shows.
Where a site will not act, UK data protection law gives you a right to ask for personal data to be erased. It is not absolute: it applies in set circumstances, and does not reach registers a public body must keep by law, such as the Land Registry’s. A request can be made in writing or verbally, is usually free, and the organisation normally has a calendar month to respond. The ICO’s guidance on the right to erasure explains when it applies and how to complain.
Deliveries, staff and contractors
For anything that does not need to come to the house, use a parcel locker, a collection point or an office address. Staff and contractors hold more than the address: the codes, the routine, who is away and when. Vet household staff to BS 7858, the British Standard for screening people who work in a secure environment. Put it in writing that the house, the family and the work are not photographed, posted or discussed online, during employment and after it. Ask the builder and the interior designer to keep the house out of their portfolios, or unrecognisable from the street.
What the household posts
Location data. Police guidance on ProtectUK notes that geotagging marks a photograph with a location, and advises removing that data from phone pictures before posting. Turn off location tagging in the camera and in each app, on every phone in the house.
What is in the frame. A house number on the door, a car registration on the drive, a street sign, the view from a front window. Check the background before a photograph is posted.
Children’s posts. School uniforms and badges, sports kit with a club name, the walk to school filmed from the same corner each morning. Teenagers run their own accounts; agree with them what stays off, and check the privacy settings together.
After, not during. Post the holiday once you are home, not from the departure lounge. If the trip itself is public, cover for the house while you are away is an option.
Where a survey adds to this
Everything above can be done by the household, and for most people it is enough. If nothing suggests anyone is looking for your address, you may not need a survey; the five-minute self-assessment is a sensible first step.
Where the profile is higher — a public role, press attention, a dispute that has turned personal — a residential security survey is the next step. It reviews what public filings and the family’s social media reveal about the house, with the findings graded in the same written report as the locks and glazing. Families with several residences can have that review carried across every house within a family office security programme. Confidentiality, and how an engagement begins, are covered in the frequently asked questions.
Common questions
Can I take myself off the electoral register altogether?
Not by choice. You must register if an electoral registration officer asks, and failing to can bring a fine of up to £1,000. If your safety or a household member’s would be at risk, you can register anonymously, backed by a court document or by an application signed by, for example, a senior police officer or a director of social services. Your name and address then appear on neither version of the register. Anonymous registration lasts a year and must then be renewed.
Can I keep my name off the Land Registry?
Not for a property you own in your own name: the register is public by law and cannot itself be exempted. A document the Land Registry holds is different. One revealing an address where someone fears for their safety can be exempted from public inspection, on application and for a fee, if the Registry accepts the reasons. Whether to own a home in your own name at all is a question for a solicitor, best settled before purchase.
My address is already online. Is it too late?
No. Closing the sources stops new copies appearing, and removal requests deal with the ones already out. Keep a note of each request, the site and the date it was sent; if a site does not reply, that record is what a follow-up or a complaint rests on. If the address was posted by someone targeting you rather than listed by a directory, it is a different problem: the guide to the first 48 hours after a doxxing sets out the order.
Written by the founder, First Class Executive Security
30+ years in the security industry, 20+ in close protection
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