Last Updated on August 30, 2026
Anyone can put “trusted local electrician” on a website. The public record says whether it is true. This page is the check: four steps, about ten minutes, all free. It works for a name you found yourself, one a neighbour passed on, or one an AI engine recommended. Our own research found AI engines recommending firms that no public check could confirm, so do the ten minutes before you hand over a deposit.
Cite this page: How to check a UK tradesperson is real, Whito, written 28 August 2026. This is a procedure, not a dataset. The register links below were checked live on 28 August 2026. whito.co.uk/build/check-a-uk-tradesperson/. Free to cite with a link.
Step 1. Companies House
Search the exact business name at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. You are looking for three things: the company exists, its status says Active, and the accounts are not dormant. A dissolved or liquidated company cannot honour a guarantee. No match is not automatic failure, because sole traders are not on the register, but it means the next two steps have to carry the weight.
Step 2. The register for the trade
Every regulated or scheme-backed trade has an official register, and every register has a free public search. If the firm claims a badge, look the firm up on that badge’s own register. A logo on a website is a picture. A register entry is a fact.
| Trade | Register | Official lookup |
|---|---|---|
| Any limited company | Companies House | find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk |
| Electrician (Part P as claimed) | Registered Competent Person Electrical | electricalcompetentperson.co.uk |
| Electrician (if NICEIC claimed) | NICEIC | niceic.com/find-a-tradesperson |
| Electrician (if NAPIT claimed) | NAPIT | search.napit.org.uk |
| Anyone touching gas | Gas Safe Register (legal requirement) | gassaferegister.co.uk/find-an-engineer |
| Roofer or builder (if TrustMark claimed) | TrustMark | trustmark.org.uk/find-a-tradesperson |
| Builder (if FMB claimed) | Federation of Master Builders | fmb.org.uk/find-a-builder |
Gas is the one with no grey area: it is illegal to do gas work in the UK without Gas Safe registration, so ask to see the engineer’s Gas Safe ID card and check the licence number on the register. Dentists, vets, accountants and solicitors have statutory or professional registers of their own, so check them the same way, on the regulator’s own site, never on a badge image.
Step 3. Do the details agree
Compare three places: the firm’s website, its Google Business Profile, and its register entry. The business name, address and phone number should be the same in all three. Small differences happen, a trading name against a registered name for instance. But a website with no address, a phone number that differs everywhere you look, or a register entry in a different town is a firm that has not shown you who it is.
Step 4. Read the reviews like jobs, not like a score
Ignore the star average. Read five or six recent reviews and ask whether they describe actual jobs: a date, a problem, what was done, how the firm behaved when something went wrong. That texture is hard to fake. A wall of identical five-star reviews posted in the same week is a warning, not a credential. Since April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has banned fake reviews and hidden incentivised reviews outright, and we cover what that means for businesses in our research on the fake reviews ban.
If you are the business
Run your own site through the free check at whito.co.uk/visibility-check/. If a customer following this page cannot verify you in ten minutes, that is costing you jobs, and it is fixable.
