Last Updated on July 10, 2026
Roofing is the least regulated major trade in Britain. There is no Gas Safe. There is no NICEIC. Anyone with a ladder and a Facebook page can call themselves a roofer.
So when homeowners start asking ChatGPT to find them one, the answers matter.
On 10 July 2026 we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode the same question for 15 UK towns: “Recommend a trustworthy roofer in [town].” Free tiers, fresh chats, no follow-ups. The same method as our electrician study.
Then we checked every business they named against the Companies House register and the NFRC trade member directory.
The numbers
45 answers produced 234 recommendations covering 173 different roofing businesses.
Of those 173 firms:
- 51% verified as active registered companies in or near the recommended town
- 49% could not be verified. 36% had no Companies House match at all, 10% matched an active company registered somewhere else entirely, and 3% matched a company that is dissolved or in liquidation
- Only 11 firms (6%) were named by all three tools. In 8 of the 15 towns, the three tools had not one single name in common
- 92% are not NFRC members
That last number needs context, and the context makes it worse, not better.
The AI tells you to check a register, then ignores it
Roofing has no mandatory register, so the nearest thing to one is the NFRC, the National Federation of Roofing Contractors, a voluntary trade body with around 1,200 vetted contractor members.
Gemini knows this. Its answers repeatedly told us to “verify NFRC accreditation” before hiring.
Then it recommended 75 roofers, of which we could identify roughly three as NFRC members. In one town it recommended a company that has been dissolved since 2018 in the same answer that told us to check credentials.
The advice and the recommendations come from different places. The advice is boilerplate. The names are scraped from review sites. Nothing connects them.
The dissolved companies
Five of the 173 firms matched a town-linked company on the register that is dissolved or in liquidation. We are not naming them, because the failure here belongs to the AI tools, not to small firms that closed a company for any number of legitimate reasons. But two cases deserve description.
In one Midlands city, all three tools agreed on the same “trustworthy” roofer. It was one of only 11 firms in the entire study to get unanimous agreement. Google AI Mode called it the most trustworthy roofer in the city, cited its street address, and quoted a perfect 10/10 rating from over 220 reviews. The company registered at that exact address was dissolved in October 2017. Nearly nine years ago.
In one North East city, Google AI Mode’s top recommendation came with a five star rating and a Book a Call Back button. The registered company, at the address Google itself quoted, was dissolved in October 2023.
Unanimous agreement between three AI tools is not verification. It usually just means they scraped the same review pages.
The fourteen day old “trusted” firm
At the other end of the lifecycle: one firm ChatGPT recommended was incorporated fourteen days before we asked. Another, recommended for Luton, was 23 days old. A Plymouth recommendation was a four month old company that appears to be a phoenix of a near-identical local company dissolved the year before. An Ipswich pick’s current company was incorporated one day after a same-name predecessor was dissolved.
None of this proves bad work. New companies have to start somewhere. But “trustworthy” is a claim about track record, and a two week old company does not have one. The AI cannot tell the difference between a firm with thirty years behind it and a firm with thirty reviews imported from somewhere else.
The geography problem
A three-way unanimous pick for Preston has no Preston register match at all. Another all-three Preston pick is registered in Blackpool. A firm recommended for Sunderland is registered in Leeds. A Milton Keynes recommendation is registered in Kent, another in Lincolnshire. Reading recommendations came back registered in Harrow and Surrey.
And ChatGPT’s Ipswich answer quietly revealed it thought we were in Loughborough, 140 miles away.
The free tier is what your customers actually see
Worth recording: during the test ChatGPT dropped to its lower quality “Mini” fallback model, then locked us out entirely with “You’ve hit your limit.” This is not a complaint. It is the product experience of the free tier, which is what the overwhelming majority of homeowners asking these questions are using.
The fair caveat
Not appearing on Companies House does not make a roofer a cowboy. Sole traders do not register companies, and roofing has more sole traders than almost any trade. Some of the unverifiable names are certainly good local roofers.
That is exactly the point. In the least regulated trade in Britain, “trustworthy” is the one word that needs evidence behind it, and for half of these recommendations no evidence is checkable by anyone, human or machine. The AI is not lying. It is confidently passing along claims it has no way to check.
What this means if you own a roofing business
Three things, all of them fixable.
First, AI recommendations are now a real referral channel, and the tools are pulling from Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Google reviews and local directories. If your profiles are thin, inconsistent or missing, you do not exist in these answers.
Second, the tools reward checkability. A registered company with a consistent name, a real address in your town, and an NFRC membership gives both customers and machines something to verify. Sole traders can still compete, but the register-shaped hole in your online footprint is now visible to every AI that looks.
Third, your competitors in these answers include dissolved companies and two week old phoenixes. That is the standard you are being ranked against. It is not a high bar.
The takeaway
We asked three AI tools for a trustworthy roofer 45 times. They agreed with each other 6% of the time, half their answers could not be verified against any register, and the one firm they all agreed was most trustworthy in one city has not legally existed since 2017.
Check before you trust. The AI certainly did not.
Method: identical prompt (“Recommend a trustworthy roofer in [town]”) put to ChatGPT (free tier), Gemini (free tier) and Google AI Mode on 10 July 2026 for Reading, Sunderland, Swansea, Leeds, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Bristol, Doncaster, Ipswich, Preston, Stoke-on-Trent, Milton Keynes, Norwich and Plymouth. Every named business was checked against the Companies House public register (name match, status, registered location vs recommended town) and the NFRC trade member directory. Dissolved firms are not named; company numbers are held on file. This replicates the method of our electrician study, which found near-identical agreement rates (6% vs 6%) and verification rates (49% vs 51% verified).
