Last Updated on July 9, 2026
Look at almost any roofing firm’s website and you will see the badges. NFRC. TrustMark. RoofCERT. They are the most common logos in the trade and among the least checked. That gap is exactly where roofing goes wrong, and roofing is a trade with more than its share of doorstep chancers.
The badge is not the check
People read a logo on a website as proof. It is not proof. It is a claim, and a logo is a picture anyone can drop onto a page, a van or a leaflet. There is no barrier to displaying it.
The registers exist precisely because the logo is not enough. A roof is a job you cannot easily inspect, done at height, often by someone you found in a hurry after a leak. So the sensible thing is to treat every badge as a prompt to check, not as the check itself.
What the main roofing accreditations actually mean
They are not interchangeable, and knowing the difference tells you what to ask for.
NFRC. The National Federation of Roofing Contractors, the largest roofing trade body in the UK. Members must hold public liability insurance, follow a code of conduct and are monitored. It is a business level membership, and it is the one most worth checking.
CompetentRoofer, the NFRC Competent Person Scheme. This is the one that matters for your paperwork. It lets a registered roofer self certify that the work meets Building Regulations, without a separate visit from local authority building control. That certificate is what you need when a job is notifiable.
RoofCERT. An individual certification for a specific skill, such as slating, tiling or leadwork. It sits with the person, not the firm, so you can ask the operative to show their card.
TrustMark. The government endorsed quality scheme covering many trades including roofing. Checkable on its own register.
The paperwork most people skip, and later regret
Here is the part that catches homeowners out. In England and Wales, replacing more than roughly a quarter of a roof is usually notifiable work under Building Regulations. That means it legally has to be signed off, either by building control or by a roofer registered to self certify through a scheme like CompetentRoofer.
If that certificate does not exist, the problem shows up later, often at the worst time, when you sell the house and the buyer’s solicitor asks for it. No certificate can hold up or knock money off a sale. A cheap re-roof with no paperwork is not cheap. It is a deferred bill.
So on any major roof job, ask the question early. Is this notifiable, and will I get a Building Regulations certificate.
How to verify in two minutes
This is quick and worth doing every time, even with someone a neighbour recommended.
Check the firm on the official register, not just the logo on their site. NFRC members are listed at nfrc.co.uk, TrustMark firms on the TrustMark register. If they claim a membership and are not on the directory, treat the claim as false until they explain it.
Ask to see the RoofCERT card if the badge is on their site, and check the name matches the person quoting.
Ask about the Building Regulations certificate before work starts, not after, on any re-roof or big repair.
The layer even the registers do not cover
An accreditation tells you about competence and insurance. It does not tell you whether the business behind the roofer is solid. That is a separate question, and for a job worth thousands it is worth asking.
Is the company a real registered business. How long has it traded. Who runs it. A quick look at Companies House answers all three, and it is the difference between a firm you can chase if the roof fails in two years and a name that has vanished. An accredited roofer working through a fly by night outfit is still a risk to your money.
This is the whole reason Whito exists. Dexters Build, a family roofing firm, is a good example of what a checkable business looks like. NFRC on the claim, and the business itself checked against Companies House, so a person or an AI tool can trust the listing rather than the logo.
Why AI search makes this worse
More people now ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI to find them a roofer. The problem is that most AI tools repeat what a website claims. If a page shows an NFRC logo, the AI tends to pass that on as fact, because it has no way to check the membership against the register or the business against Companies House.
A directory that verifies the business first, and shows the checks, is a more trustworthy source, for a person and for an AI tool, than a page that simply displays a badge. The claim is cheap. The check is the value.
The sharp takeaway
Never take a roofing badge at face value. Check the firm on the official register, ask for the RoofCERT card, insist on a Building Regulations certificate for any major job, and check the business on Companies House. A few minutes of checking is cheaper than one wrong roofer and a missing certificate at sale.
Whito checks UK roofers against Companies House and shows the detail, so people and AI tools can trust the listing rather than the logo. Find a verified roofer near you, or if you run a roofing business, claim your listing free.
