Short answer: only some of them. Gas work, care services, mortgage advice and estate agency each have a public register or scheme with a legal requirement behind it. Roofing, building, plumbing outside gas work, drainage and cleaning do not. For those trades, Companies House is the only public file that covers the business, and Companies House records identity, not competence.
This page is the index behind Whito’s register work. It says which public register covers a sector, what that register holds, and how much of the sector Whito has been able to confirm on it. Every figure carries the date it was collected.
Key facts
- Most of the money a UK household spends on its home goes to trades with no register anyone has to be on.
- A sole trader does not appear on Companies House at all. A name that returns nothing there has not failed a test. It is a name the register was never built to hold.
- Register gaps are large where a register does exist: 27,551 of 57,082 care services on the CQC file dated 26 August 2026, or 48.3%, had no website recorded.
- How hard you look changes the answer more than most people expect. On the same 728 businesses on 28 August 2026, one name match against Companies House failed 58% of the time and four passes of verification failed 5.2% of the time.
Sectors with a register or scheme behind the work
In these sectors there is either a legal requirement tied to a register, or a scheme that is the practical route to meeting one. Each entry names the source Whito read and the date it read it.
| Sector | Register or scheme | What the published guidance says | What Whito has measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gas work | Gas Safe Register | HSE guidance states that landlords “must only use a Gas Safe registered engineer for maintenance and safety checks on gas equipment they own and provide for tenants use in domestic premises”, under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. Read 9 September 2026 | Not yet measured |
| Domestic electrical work | Competent person schemes, including NICEIC, NAPIT, ELECSA and STROMA | Joining is not compulsory. Gov.uk states you “do not need to get approval yourself if you use someone registered with a competent person scheme”, so the scheme is the alternative to notifying building control. Read 9 September 2026 | Scheme membership not yet measured. Of 182 electricians named to buyers across 15 towns, 51% could not be matched to an active registered company. July 2026 |
| Estate and letting agency | An approved redress scheme: The Property Ombudsman, or Property Redress Scheme | Gov.uk states that estate agents dealing with residential property, and letting agents and property managers in England and Wales, must join one, and that you “may be fined up to £5,000” for not joining. Read 9 September 2026 | Not yet measured |
| Care services in England | Care Quality Commission | The CQC publishes the register of providers of regulated activities in England, including a website field | 27,551 of 57,082 registered services, 48.3%, had no website on the file dated 26 August 2026. Home care specifically: 7,078 of 14,509 agencies, 48.8% |
| Mortgage advice | FCA Financial Services Register | The FCA publishes the register of authorised firms, their permissions, and the appointed representatives trading under them | Of 88 firms named to buyers across 12 cities, 17, or 19.3%, produced no safe register match. A further 50, or 56.8%, were appointed representatives trading under a name different from the authorised entity. 8 September 2026 |
Sectors with no register you must hold to trade
Nobody has to grant you permission to start. Building work in these trades may still be notifiable to building control, and trade associations exist, but association membership is applied for and paid for. It is a purchase, not a permission.
| Sector | What exists instead | What Whito has measured |
|---|---|---|
| Roofing | Trade associations, including NFRC. Membership is applied for | 92% of 173 roofing firms named to buyers were not NFRC members. 49% could not be matched to an active registered company. 10 July 2026 |
| Plumbing, outside gas work | No register you must hold to trade | Included in the 64-firm ordinary-search check, July 2026 |
| Building | No register you must hold to trade | Included in the 64-firm ordinary-search check, July 2026 |
| Drainage | No register you must hold to trade | Companies House listed 1,323 active UK companies with drainage in the name on 6 September 2026 |
| Cleaning | No register you must hold to trade | Not yet measured |
Dentistry, veterinary surgery, legal services and audit each have their own regulator and public register. Those rows are not on this page yet, because Whito has not run a check in those sectors and does not publish a position it has not read and dated. They arrive when the checks do.
Companies House sits under all of it
Every row above assumes you can first work out which legal entity you are dealing with. That is what Companies House is for, and it is the identity layer for the whole index.
It has one large hole. A sole trader is not on it. No company, no filing, nothing to find. That is why Whito reports “could not be matched” and never “does not exist”.
What Companies House gives you free, in about ninety seconds:
- whether a company of that name exists, and whether it is Active, Dissolved, In liquidation or Proposed to be struck off
- the incorporation date, so a claim of twenty years experience has something to sit against
- the registered office, so a firm advertising in Leeds shows whether Leeds appears anywhere on its file
- the accounts and confirmation statement filing history
The register-confirmed share
The register-confirmed share is the proportion of businesses in a sector that can be confirmed on a named public register on a stated date. It is the number this index is built to carry.
It moves with the sector, with which register you use, and above all with how hard the checker looks before giving up. On the same set of 728 businesses on 28 August 2026, a single name match against Companies House failed 58% of the time and four passes of verification failed 5.2% of the time. Same businesses, same register, same day.
So any figure of the “half of them are not real” shape, including some of Whito’s own earlier ones, says as much about the checker as the checked. Every cell above names the study it came from, and anyone quoting a cell should say how far that study looked.
What this index does not say
This matters more than anything else on the page.
- It is not legal advice. It is a summary of what public guidance and public registers say, with dates. If you need to know whether a rule applies to you, check the regulator’s own page or take advice.
- No business is named anywhere in this index, and nothing here is an allegation about any individual firm.
- A name that could not be matched is not a claim of wrongdoing. Sole traders, recent name changes, trading names that differ from the registered entity, and firms operating under a group company all fail a Companies House name check while being entirely legitimate.
- A blank field on a register is not proof of absence. Whito spot-checked ten CQC entries with no website recorded, and three had a working website the register did not hold.
- Registers drift. Companies change status, providers re-register, permissions lapse. Every figure is true of the date next to it and no other date.
- The samples are small and they are not a census. The trade checks run to dozens or low hundreds of businesses. They show what an ordinary customer runs into. They do not grade a sector, a town or any single business.
- Rows come from differently designed studies. A 48.3% register gap in care and a 49% unmatched rate in roofing are a full-file read and a sampled name check. They are not the same measurement and should not be added together.
Method
How a row is built. A sector gets a row when Whito can name the register that covers it, or establish that none is required to trade. It gets a figure when Whito has run a check and published it, with a collection date. It gets “not yet measured” otherwise. No row carries a figure taken from another statistics site.
Matching rules. A business counts as confirmed when a company on Companies House matches it and shows status Active. Whito looks it up by trading name, by any limited-company name shown on the business’s own website, and by any company number the business publishes. A published company number beats a name match. For sector registers, trading names are matched by hand, reading the firm’s own website for the stated entity name and any registration number, then confirming on the register. Local trading names of one brand count as one firm.
Sources. Every entry in the guidance column names its source and the date Whito read it. Where no source has been read, the cell says so rather than stating a position.
Update cadence. Quarterly, or sooner when a study fills an empty cell.
Common questions
Which UK trades must be on a register?
Gas work is the clearest case: HSE guidance tells landlords to use only a Gas Safe registered engineer for gas equipment they provide, under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. Care providers in England, firms giving mortgage advice, and estate and letting agents also sit under registers or schemes with legal requirements attached. Read 9 September 2026.
Do plumbers, roofers or builders have to be registered in the UK?
There is no register a plumber, roofer or builder must hold to trade, gas work aside. Building work may still be notifiable to building control, and trade associations exist, but their membership is applied for and paid for rather than granted by a regulator.
Does being on Companies House mean a business is any good?
No. Companies House records identity, not competence or quality. It tells you a company exists, when it was incorporated, where it is registered and whether it is still active. It says nothing about workmanship.
What does it mean if a business is not on Companies House?
Usually that it is a sole trader, which is entirely lawful and very common in the trades. It can also mean the trading name differs from the registered company name. Whito’s wording is always “could not be matched”, never “does not exist”.
What is the register-confirmed share?
The register-confirmed share is the proportion of businesses in a sector that can be confirmed on a named public register on a stated date. Whito uses it to compare sectors on the same measurement.
Corrections and right of reply
If a figure on this page is wrong, or you operate a register, scheme or directory and disagree with how its file is described here, write to Whito and it will be checked. Corrections are made on the page with the date of the change, not quietly.
How to quote this
Whito, Which UK trades have a public register? The UK public record index, https://whito.co.uk/records/, last updated 9 September 2026.
Free to quote with a link. If you are quoting a single cell, quote its collection date with it, or the figure means nothing. Record-level files behind these studies are available through Whito Intelligence.
Where to go next
- We checked 164 UK trade names against Companies House, and where the name came from predicted which ones failed
- Visibility Check, 17 checks on your own site, free, no email needed
- Find, businesses Whito has already confirmed
- Research, the studies behind this index
- How we make money
The studies clustered under this index
- We checked 64 UK tradespeople against Companies House. 19 could not be verified
- We checked 100 UK directory listings against Companies House. 29 failed
- We asked AI for a mortgage adviser, then checked all 88 firms on the FCA register
- UK Care Sector Statistics 2026: the register gap, reviews and costs
- UK Electrician Statistics 2026
- UK Roofing Statistics 2026
- UK Drainage Statistics 2026
- Review Forensics: inside the profiles behind AI’s most trusted roofers
Last updated 9 September 2026. Next scheduled re-cut: December 2026. Some measurements in this index come from lists of businesses an AI assistant produced when asked to recommend a local firm. The register check is the study; the list is only the input.