How to check any UK tradesperson in two minutes

At three in the morning, with water coming through the ceiling or a boiler making a noise it has never made before, nobody researches. They ring the first number and hope.

This page exists so that you can do the checking in two minutes instead. Every register below is free, public, searchable from a phone, and — crucially — searchable from the regulator’s side, not from the company’s.

Gas — this one is the law, not a preference

Gas Safe Register

By law, every gas engineer working in the UK must be on the Gas Safe Register. Not “should be”. Must be. It is the official gas registration body for the UK, the Isle of Man and Guernsey, and there is no legitimate exception — not for a friend of a friend, not for a small job, not at 2am.

Search by business name or by registration number. If they are not on it, they are not legally allowed to touch your boiler, your hob or your gas meter, and the consequences of unqualified gas work are not financial.

If you can smell gas: leave the building, do not touch switches, and call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 from outside.

Electrics

NICEIC — and NAPIT or ELECSA, which run comparable schemes.

Electrical work is not policed by a single legal register the way gas is, so these voluntary schemes carry the weight. Registered electricians are assessed on their actual work, their premises, their documentation, their equipment and the competence of their staff — and reassessed periodically, which is the part that matters.

Search the registered company name on the scheme’s own site.

Plumbing and water

WaterSafe

The national accreditation scheme for approved plumbing businesses, bringing the various regional approved-contractor schemes into one searchable place.

For a genuine emergency — a burst main, water coming through a ceiling — your first call is your water company’s 24-hour emergency line, not a plumber. They deal with the supply side and can shut it off. In most of London that is Thames Water; check by postcode if you are not sure.

General trades and handymen

TrustMark

A not-for-profit organisation licensed by government. Worth understanding exactly what it does: TrustMark does not vet individual tradespeople itself. It endorses the scheme operators — FMB, NICEIC, Gas Safe, MCS and others — who do the vetting.

So use TrustMark to find out which scheme covers the trade you need, then verify the individual firm on that scheme’s register. It is a signpost, not a certificate.

Locksmiths — the unregulated one

Master Locksmiths Association

Here is the uncomfortable fact: locksmithing is not a licensed trade in the United Kingdom. No legal qualification is required. No register must be joined. No licence can be revoked. Anyone may print a card tomorrow and advertise, entirely lawfully.

The MLA is a voluntary trade association that vets and inspects its members — which is far more scrutiny than the law demands, and therefore the best signal available. Search the MLA’s own directory for the company name.

This is also the trade with the most documented overcharging, precisely because it combines no regulation with customers who are locked outside and desperate. Our sister site, the London Lockout Guide, covers what a lockout should actually cost and how the overcharging playbook runs, step by step.

Childcare, babysitters and nannies

Ofsted, and the list of registered childminder agencies

Childminders register either with Ofsted directly or with a childminder agency. Both routes produce public records, and Ofsted inspection reports are published.

Two things people routinely conflate:

• DBS check and registration are different things. A DBS certificate is a criminal records check on an individual. Registration is an inspected, ongoing status. Ask to see both, and verify both yourself.
• A listing site is not a regulator. Words like “vetted”, “trusted” and “verified” on a commercial directory are marketing terms with no legal meaning. The regulator’s record is the record.

Ask to see original documents, not photographs of them, and check the name on the certificate matches the person in front of you.

The universal checks, whatever the trade

Beyond the register, four questions do most of the remaining work:

1. “What is the total, including callout, labour, parts and VAT?” Ask for it in writing, by text, before anyone travels. A firm that will not put a number in writing has told you something.
2. “Is there a real address?” Not a list of boroughs “covered”. Premises, or at minimum a registered trading address you can put into a map.
3. “Are you the company attending, or subcontracting?” If somebody else turns up, you need to know who you actually contracted with — it matters enormously if you have to pursue the money later.
4. Pay by card, never cash under pressure. Card leaves a record, a chargeback route and, above a threshold on a credit card, Section 75 protection. Cash leaves you nothing.

If it goes wrong afterwards

Under UK consumer law a service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill, and where no price was agreed in advance you are required to pay only a reasonable price — not whatever appears on the invoice. An invoice is a claim, not a verdict.

Keep the invoice, the parts, the texts and photographs of the work. Contact Citizens Advice, who advise on the dispute and pass reports to Trading Standards. If you paid by card, ring your bank promptly — chargeback and Section 75 both have time limits.

Do this now, not at 3am

Take five minutes on a calm afternoon and save four numbers into your phone: a Gas Safe registered engineer, an electrician, your water company’s emergency line, and a locksmith you checked properly.

The best time to choose a tradesperson is while you do not need one. Everything on this page is much harder to do while standing in six inches of water.

Sources and registers

• Gas Safe Register — check a business
• NICEIC
• WaterSafe
• TrustMark
• Master Locksmiths Association
• GOV.UK — childminder agencies
• Citizens Advice

Checked 27 August 2026.