Last Updated on September 8, 2026
In a trade with no register, everything you can prove beats everything you can claim. Most of the proof is free and almost nobody publishes it.
Start with what a client can verify
A domestic client comparing three scaffolding quotes has no verification route at all. No register, no protected title, no offence. So the only visible variable is price, and you lose to whoever is cheapest.
That is fixable, for nothing, by publishing the things that can be checked:
- Company number and registered address, as text.
- CISRS card grades held by the squad who will actually be on site.
- NASC membership and, if you have it, when your last site audit was.
- CHAS or SSIP status, which a client can verify free on the SSIP portal.
- Streetworks qualifications, if you do groundworks in the highway.
- Public liability cover level and insurer.
When Whito checked 64 UK tradespeople found by ordinary search against Companies House in July 2026, 30 per cent could not be verified as an active company, including two trading under a dissolved one. Being in the verifiable 70 per cent and saying so costs you a footer.
The zero-pound weekend, contractor version
Whito calls the two days of free fixes a business does before it pays for a lead the zero-pound weekend. Here it is for this trade.
- Make Companies House, your website and your Google Business Profile agree on name, address and phone number.
- Put the company number and registered address in the footer as text.
- List CISRS card grades, NASC or CHAS status and insurance cover on an about page.
- Write the hire basis paragraph: weekly or job price, minimum period, overrun rate, and what is included.
- Photograph the tie detail, a boarded lift, a handrail and an inspection tag.
- Write two hundred words on inspection: who inspects, how often, and how the client sees the record.
- Split the site into job types: domestic, chimney, temporary roof, commercial elevation, groundworks.
- Ask your last ten clients for a review naming the property type and the town.
The photographs everybody misses
Every scaffolding website has the same photograph: a finished scaffold shot from the pavement. It proves nothing, because a bad scaffold looks the same from the pavement.
What proves something:
- A tie detail, close up.
- A fully boarded lift with the gap closed.
- Handrail and toeboard height, with something in frame for scale.
- A dated inspection tag on a live job.
- Netting or sheeting fixed properly at the edge.
- The pavement at the end of the day, clean.
None of those cost anything. Together they say competent in a way that a certificate logo cannot, particularly to a commercial client who knows what they are looking at.
The inspection paragraph
Regulations 12 and 13 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 require inspection of work equipment and of places of work at height. Most firms comply and none of them mention it.
Two hundred words saying who is qualified to inspect, on what schedule, what the record looks like and how a client can see it, is free, true, and does something no accreditation logo does: it explains the difference between you and the cheaper quote in language a client understands.
Where the leads actually are
For domestic work, the platform positions are known. Checkatrade publishes a free tier, Approved at £30 a month and Growth from £59 a month, on twelve month terms. MyBuilder publishes no membership fee and shortlist fees typically £2 to £35 depending on job size, so you pay only when a homeowner shortlists you. Constructionline publishes nothing beyond Bronze at £75 joining and £150 a year.
For commercial work, the route is prequalification rather than advertising. CHAS from £429 a year, SSIP verification free to the client, and Constructionline Bronze at £225 in year one are the entry costs to being findable by the people who buy scaffolding professionally.
Those are two different businesses with two different marketing jobs, and a firm doing both should say so on the site rather than writing one page that half fits each.
Common questions
What is the single best free thing to add?
The hire basis paragraph. It removes the confusion the national cost guides create, and it is the reason most quote comparisons in this trade go wrong.
Do reviews matter for commercial scaffolding?
Less than accreditation and references do. For domestic work they matter a great deal. If you do both, ask domestic clients for reviews and commercial clients for a named reference you can use, and keep them in different places on the site.
Should I be on Checkatrade?
Run one trial and log which leads became jobs for ninety days before renewing. MyBuilder’s model is easier to measure because it publishes per-job shortlist fees, so cost per opportunity is knowable in advance.
The structural checks behind this research run on any website in about twenty seconds. Enter yours and read the full result on the page. Free, and we do not ask for your email.
Run the free Visibility Check