Recognition
The debt's paid off, but the register still shows it as live
A business repays a facility in full, reasonably expecting the charge to quietly disappear from its Companies House record. Months or even years later, it's still sitting there marked unsatisfied, because repaying the debt and updating the public register are two separate actions, and only one of them happens automatically.
Why it happens
Filing a satisfaction is common practice, not a legal requirement
Once a charge is fully or partly repaid, a statement of satisfaction can be filed with Companies House at any time. There's no statutory deadline forcing it, unlike the 21-day window for registering the charge in the first place. In practice, most lenders file it as a matter of course once a facility closes cleanly. It gets missed when a facility rolls into something else, a relationship manager changes, or nobody's specifically tasked with the paperwork after the money's actually settled.
Worth knowing: an unfiled satisfaction isn't a sign anything's wrong. It usually just means nobody's told the register the debt is gone. It can still cause real friction later: a new lender reading the register cold sees an apparently live charge and has to ask questions a five-minute filing would have avoided.
Where this fits
Form MR04, and who can actually file it
The relevant form is MR04, a statement of satisfaction in full or in part of a charge, filed under section 859L of the Companies Act 2006. It can be filed by the company itself. It doesn't require the lender to initiate it, which matters if the lender has gone quiet or simply hasn't got round to it. Online filing is processed faster than paper.
Specialist insight
What the form actually needs to say
The filing has to state clearly whether the charge is satisfied in full or only in part, and for older charges (created before 6 April 2013) a different part of the MR04 form itself applies than for more recent ones. Getting this wrong, or filing a full satisfaction when only part of the debt was actually cleared, creates its own confusion on the public record, so the underlying facts need to be right before submitting, not just the paperwork completed.
Decision helper
What typically fits
If you're mid-application for new finance and an old, genuinely repaid charge is still showing, filing the satisfaction alongside the application rather than after usually avoids a new lender raising it as a question that slows things down. See borrowing with an existing debenture for the broader question of what an existing charge does and doesn't block.
Alternatives and limitations
This page covers the straightforward case: a genuinely repaid debt with no dispute about the facts. A contested satisfaction, or a charge the original lender disputes is actually repaid, is a legal question for the parties involved, not something a Companies House filing resolves on its own. Source: gov.uk, register a statement of satisfaction (MR04).
