Does absolutely every business have to be registered at Companies House?

[brownfox8]

Companies House has a free database where you can view the latest accounts of many businesses but does it hold records of all businesses? For example, if I want to see the latest accounts filed for my local high street cake shop, will they be there? What does it mean if you can't find a listing for the business or under the name of the owner?

My understanding is that Companies House has details of all Limited companies and plc’s - including, I believe, dissolved ones.

If your local cake shop is Chris Smith Limited, it will be listed, but if it’s Chris Smith trading as Tasty Cakes, it won’t be listed.

It depends if they're trading as a ltd company or a sole trader. Sole traders don't have anything to do with companies house (I ran a retail business on a high st for 4 years as a sole trader).
You should be able to find ltd companies at companies house, but they may not be trading under the same name as the name over the door of the shop, so you'd need to know whether the company was listed as something else.

But surely I ought to be able to find the company by putting in 'Chris Smith' Pav

My exdh was a sole trader but he had a limited company

Only if Chris Smith is a company director, fox. If Chris is a sole trader, or working in a partnership, they won’t be registered at Companies House.

You can’t see private partnerships afaik.

Companies are legal entities in their own right, in order to exist they have to be registered at Companies House and you can find them by searching their database.

A business does not have to be carried out by a company, it a sole trade or partnership and if so wouldn't be registered with Companies House.

You can be a sole trader and, separately, be a company director; so I could be ‘Pav trading us XYZ’ for my cake shop, but also a director (or the secretary of) ABC Limited for a separate business. So I would be recorded at CH, but only in respect of my directorship of ABC Limited.

As pp have said all companies are listed on companies House. Not all businesses are set up as companies though.
You can search for a company name or a director of that company . The company name may or may not be obvious from the shop name but if you know the full name of the owner that would probably be your most helpful way of finding it. However, unless the shop is very large or part of a chain, the information in the public domain is pretty limited. You won't see how much they sell or profits that they make for example.