The UK plumbing industry in 2026: size, structure and outlook

Data last verified: 5 November 2026. Figures re-checked against their primary sources under the Whito rolling re-verification programme.

Short answer: the UK had 47,910 plumbing, heating and air-conditioning businesses registered for VAT or PAYE in March 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics. That is up from 40,665 in 2021 and 30,230 in 2010. Almost all are very small: 86.5% have fewer than five employees, and only 25 employ 250 people or more. The Gas Safe Register, which every business doing paid gas work must join, listed around 80,014 registered businesses in early 2024, a much larger figure because it includes sole traders too small to appear in the ONS count.

Most “plumbing industry statistics” pages online repeat a market-size estimate from a paid report, with no date and no way to check it. This page uses only official counts you can rerun yourself, plus figures Whito has collected and published with their dates. Where something is not known, we say so.

The key figures

1. How many plumbing businesses are there in the UK?

The ONS counts businesses using the Inter-Departmental Business Register, a list of every business registered for VAT or for PAYE (the system employers use to pay staff wages). Plumbing sits in industry code 43220, “plumbing, heat and air-conditioning installation”. In March 2026 that code held 47,910 enterprises.

Two things to know before quoting that number:

• It is wider than plumbers. Code 43220 also covers heating engineers and air-conditioning installers. There is no official count of plumbing-only firms.
• It misses the smallest sole traders. A self-employed plumber who is under the VAT threshold and employs nobody is not on the register. That is why other counts, like the Gas Safe Register’s, come out higher.

Size: a trade of one-person and two-person firms

Source: ONS UK Business Counts, enterprises by industry and employment size band, 2026, via Nomis (dataset NM_142_1, updated 24 September 2026). Counts are rounded to the nearest 5, so the bands add to 47,915. Shares are Whito’s calculation.

Only about one business in twenty (2,545, or 5.3%) employs ten or more people. For anyone selling to the trade, that matters: most buying decisions are made by the person who also does the work, often in the evening, often on a phone.

2. Where plumbing businesses are based

Plumbing businesses are not spread evenly. The East of England has the most per head of population and the North East the fewest.

Sources: business counts as above; population from ONS mid-2025 population estimates via Nomis (NM_2002_1, updated 29 July 2026). The per-head figures are Whito’s calculation. A business is counted where it is registered, which is not always where it works.

We look at what this means, including how fast each region has grown since 2010, in How crowded is plumbing where you are?.

3. Two counts, one trade: the ONS and the Gas Safe Register

Whito set the two main counts side by side:

• ONS: 47,910 businesses in plumbing, heating and air-con (March 2026), VAT or PAYE registered only.
• Gas Safe Register: around 80,014 registered gas businesses (February 2024), including sole traders of any size, and covering Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and Guernsey.

The register is about 1.7 times the size of the ONS count, even though it is two years older and covers only gas work. The most likely reason is that a large share of the trade is made up of sole traders below the VAT threshold who never appear in official business counts. It also means an official count understates how many separate businesses a customer could hire. (This is Whito’s reading of two published figures, not a measured finding. The Gas Safe Register does not publish a current count on its own site that we could open.)

For plumbing work that does not involve gas, there is no register at all. Anyone can call themselves a plumber. We explain what to check instead in Is your plumber qualified?

4. Who regulates plumbing

Plumbing is not a licensed trade in the UK. The rules that do apply depend on the work.

Voluntary schemes add a layer of checking. WaterSafe, the water industry’s register of approved plumbing businesses, says approved contractors make up about 5 per cent of UK plumbers. Its approved schemes include WIAPS, APHC, CIPHE and SNIPEF. CIPHE is a chartered membership body and educational charity; APHC is a not-for-profit trade body for England and Wales that has represented plumbers since 1925.

5. Complaints: what goes wrong

Citizens Advice received 2,629 complaints about plumbers and plumbing between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025, 7.2% of all complaints about home maintenance and improvement work. Plumbing ranked fourth, behind roofing (8,126), which ranked first. Across all home maintenance work, the most common problem was substandard service (52.8% of complaints).

Whito’s own research points to two causes customers can check for themselves:

• Prices are rarely published. Of 179 emergency plumber websites Whito read in October 2026, 117 published no call-out price. See Emergency plumber call-out prices.
• AI assistants name firms that may not exist as companies. In September 2026, 34 of 75 plumbers named by ChatGPT and Gemini (45%) matched an active local company at Companies House. See AI plumber recommendations vs the Gas Safe Register.

6. What is changing

Heat pumps and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme

In England and Wales, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays £7,500 towards an air source or ground source heat pump, and until March 2027 an extra £1,500 is available on top (GOV.UK, page updated 30 October 2026). By 30 September 2026 Ofgem had issued 106,185 vouchers and paid £687,450,500 in grants since the scheme opened in May 2022.

The installer base is still small next to the plumbing and heating trade. MCS, the certification scheme for low-carbon installers, said in March 2025 that more than 2,000 contractors held heat pump certification, out of over 5,250 MCS-certified contractors in total. Set against 47,910 plumbing and heating businesses, that is a narrow group able to fit grant-funded heat pumps.

New homes standards

The regulations bringing in the Future Homes and Buildings Standards come into force on 24 March 2027 (Building Circular 01/2026, published 24 March 2026). Their aim is for new homes to be “built with low carbon heating and high levels of energy efficiency”, and the updated guidance covers heat pump controls and installation. There is a transition: the changes do not apply where building control notice was given before 24 March 2027 and work starts before 24 March 2028. For plumbing and heating businesses working on new-build sites, that means heat pump skills move from optional to expected over the next two years.

The workforce

CITB’s Construction Workforce Outlook 2026 to 2030 (published 17 June 2026) says construction as a whole will need around 206,000 extra workers over five years, an average of 41,200 a year. CITB publishes a separate figure for plumbing and heating trades in its interactive data, which we have not yet been able to extract. We will add it.

7. What we do not know yet

• What plumbers earn. The ONS published provisional 2026 earnings by occupation on 22 October 2026. We will add the median for plumbers and heating engineers once we have read it from the source tables, rather than repeating figures from salary websites.
• Industry turnover. The ONS published turnover for plumbing and heating businesses by size band in January 2026 (ad hoc release 3256). We will add it from the source file.
• A current Gas Safe count. The newest official figure we could open is from February 2024.
• Market size in pounds. Commercial reports sell estimates. We do not repeat figures we cannot check.

Method and limits

• Business counts: ONS UK Business Counts, enterprises, SIC 2007 code 43220, all legal statuses, March 2026 snapshot, via the Nomis API (dataset NM_142_1). Rounded to the nearest 5 by ONS. Query: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/api/v01/dataset/NM_142_1.data.csv?geography=2092957697&industry=134260948&employment_sizeband=0&legal_status=0&measures=20100&date=latest
• Population: ONS mid-2025 estimates via Nomis (NM_2002_1). Business counts are March 2026, population mid-2025.
• Percentages and per-head figures are Whito calculations from those counts.
• Gas Safe figures come from an HSE contract notice on Find a Tender (notice 003347-2024, published 1 February 2024).
• Whito research figures link to the study that produced them, each with its own method.

Compare with other industries: see UK trade businesses in 2026: ten industries compared, one table with each count, its date and the change since 2010 and 2021.

Common questions

How many plumbers are there in the UK?

There is no single official count of plumbers. The ONS counts 47,910 plumbing, heating and air-con businesses registered for VAT or PAYE (March 2026). The Gas Safe Register listed around 155,653 gas engineers and 80,014 gas businesses in February 2024. Plumbers who do no gas work and are too small to register for VAT are not counted anywhere.

Is the UK plumbing industry growing?

The number of registered plumbing, heating and air-con businesses grew by 17.8% between 2021 and 2026, and by 58.5% since 2010 (ONS).

Do plumbers need a licence in the UK?

No. Gas work must be done by a Gas Safe registered business. Other plumbing needs no licence, although water fittings must meet the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, or the 2014 Byelaws in Scotland.

Which region has the most plumbing businesses?

The South East has the most by number (8,670). The East of England has the most per head, at 96.5 per 100,000 residents (Whito calculation from ONS data).

How many plumbing businesses are sole traders or micro firms?

41,450 of 47,910 registered businesses (86.5%) have fewer than five employees. Many more sole traders are too small to appear in the count.

How many complaints are made about plumbers?

Citizens Advice received 2,629 complaints about plumbers and plumbing between July 2024 and June 2025.

Sources (opened 5 November 2026)

• ONS UK Business Counts via Nomis, NM_142_1 (updated 24 Sep 2026): https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/api/v01/dataset/NM_142_1
• ONS release page, UK business: activity, size and location: https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/datasets/ukbusinessactivitysizeandlocation
• ONS mid-2025 population estimates via Nomis, NM_2002_1 (updated 29 Jul 2026)
• HSE contract notice, Gas Safe Register (1 Feb 2024): https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/003347-2024
• Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, reg 3: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/2451/regulation/3
• Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, regs 4 and 5: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/1148/regulation/5
• Scottish Water, water byelaws: https://scottishwater.co.uk/Business-and-Developers/Byelaws-and-Trade-Effluent/Water-Byelaws
• Building Regulations 2010, Schedule 1: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/2214/schedule/1
• WaterSafe, why use an approved contractor: https://www.watersafe.org.uk/about/why_use_an_approved_contractor_/
• APHC about us: https://aphc.co.uk/about-us/ ; CIPHE about: https://ciphe.org.uk/about
• Citizens Advice press release (11 Aug 2025): https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/shoddy-tradeswork-is-sparking-more-than-700-complaints-a-week-says-citizens/
• GOV.UK Boiler Upgrade Scheme, what you can get (updated 30 Oct 2026): https://www.gov.uk/apply-boiler-upgrade-scheme/what-you-can-get
• Ofgem BUS monthly scheme update (updated 13 Oct 2026): https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data/bus-monthly-scheme-update
• MCS news (5 Mar 2025): https://mcscertified.com/?p=9791
• CITB Construction Workforce Outlook 2026-2030 (17 Jun 2026): https://www.citb.co.uk/cwo
• GOV.UK, The Future Homes and Buildings Standards: Building Circular 01/2026 (24 Mar 2026): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-future-homes-and-buildings-standards-building-circular-012026/the-future-homes-and-buildings-standards-building-circular-012026-letter

Jacob Whitmore

Whito is an independent UK research publisher. We publish research on how UK businesses are found, trusted and priced: what they cost to market, how their sectors work, and who actually gets recommended. Studies are free to read, every figure carries the date it was checked, and nobody pays to appear.

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