There is no single licence to be a tradesperson in the UK. A few trades have a statutory register it is a criminal offence to work outside — gas, dentistry, optics, law, driving instruction — and most trades have none at all. What you can check depends entirely on which trade you are hiring.
That is the honest starting point. A directory implying every listed trade was licensed would be misleading about most of them, so what follows is what actually exists.
Which trades have a register you can rely on?
These are backed by statute. Working outside them is not a matter of professional etiquette; it is unlawful.
Gas work
Regulation 3(3) of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 provides that no employer shall allow an employee to carry out work in relation to a gas fitting, and no self-employed person shall carry out such work, unless they are "a member of a class of persons approved for the time being by the Health and Safety Executive". In practice that approved class is the Gas Safe Register. Regulation 3(7) separately makes it an offence to falsely pretend to be a member.
Ask for the Gas Safe card and check the licence number on the Gas Safe Register before any work on a boiler or gas appliance. The card carries a photograph and an expiry date, and lists the specific categories of work the engineer is qualified for — a card is not a blanket permission.
Water-only plumbing has no statutory register at all. A plumber who does not touch gas is not required to be registered with anyone.
Dentists and opticians
Every dentist practising in the UK must be registered with the General Dental Council, and practising while unregistered is a criminal offence. The GDC register is free and public and searchable by name. Optometrists and dispensing opticians must be registered with the General Optical Council, whose register works the same way.
Solicitors
Solicitor is a protected title. Only someone regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority may use it, and regulated firms must hold client money in a protected account. The Law Society’s Find a Solicitor service lets you check both the firm and the individual. Unregulated providers may still lawfully offer some legal services, but you lose SRA protection and access to the compensation fund if things go wrong.
Driving instructors
Section 123 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 provides that no paid instruction in the driving of a motor car shall be given unless the instructor is a registered approved driving instructor or holds a current trainee licence, and creates an offence for giving instruction in breach of it. There is a further offence relating to failure to display the certificate or licence. A green badge in the windscreen means a fully approved instructor, a pink one a trainee. No badge means they may not lawfully charge you.
Taxi and private hire
Licensing is done by the local council, not nationally, and the vehicle needs its own licence as well as the driver. Check the council plate on the vehicle and the badge the driver must display. A private hire car must be booked in advance and may not be flagged down in the street.
Food businesses
Every food business must be registered with its local council, is inspected, and is given a food hygiene rating from 0 to 5 by the Food Standards Agency. Ratings are published at ratings.food.gov.uk. In Wales and Northern Ireland the rating must be displayed at the entrance; in England displaying it is voluntary, so a missing sticker is not itself a bad sign — look the business up on the register instead.
Estate agents
Every estate agent must belong to a government-approved redress scheme, under the framework introduced by the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007 and the Estate Agents (Redress Scheme) Order 2008. The approved schemes are The Property Ombudsman and the Property Redress Scheme, and you can confirm membership on the scheme’s own website. Trading Standards can impose penalty charges on an agent who is not a member. An agent who cannot name their scheme is trading unlawfully.
Electricians: a register, but not the kind you expect
Electrical work in a home in England and Wales must comply with Part P of the Building Regulations. There is no licence to be an electrician — but there are competent person schemes, authorised by government, whose members may self-certify that their own work complies with the Building Regulations rather than notifying local authority building control in advance.
GOV.UK publishes the list of currently authorised schemes and the work each covers, and that list is the thing to check against, because scheme brands merge and change hands. NICEIC and NAPIT are long-standing electrical scheme operators.
The practical consequence for you is concrete. A scheme member issues a Building Regulations compliance certificate and notifies the council. Someone outside a scheme cannot, which means you must notify building control yourself before the work starts, and pay for their inspection. Our guide on who signs off building regulations work sets out how that works.
Trades with no register at all
Builders, roofers, painters and decorators, carpenters, gardeners, cleaners, locksmiths, removals firms, personal trainers, IT support, photographers — for these there is no statutory licence in the UK, and nobody can take one away.
Accountant is worth calling out because the word sounds regulated and is not: anyone may use it. Chartered and certified accountants belong to bodies that require qualification, insurance and continuing training — ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA, ICAS, AAT — and you can check membership on the relevant body’s register. Anyone filing tax on your behalf must additionally be registered for anti-money-laundering supervision.
Where there is no register, these are the checks that still work:
- Companies House. The register is free and public: incorporation date, registered office, officers, filed accounts, and whether the company is in liquidation or facing a strike-off notice. A sole trader will not appear at all, which is normal.
- Public liability insurance. Ask to see the certificate, not to be told it exists. Check the dates and the insured name matches who you are hiring.
- Voluntary schemes. TrustMark describes itself as the government-endorsed quality scheme for work in and around the home and has a searchable register. Trade bodies exist for most trades — the Federation of Master Builders, the National Federation of Roofing Contractors, the British Association of Removers. Membership is a real signal because it is checkable, but it is a membership, not a licence.
- The written terms. A trader who will put the scope, the total price and the payment stages in an email has already told you something about how the job will run.
Does a logo on a van prove anything?
Only if you check it, and checking is now backed by law. Schedule 20 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 lists commercial practices that are unfair in all circumstances. Paragraph 1 covers "claiming to be a signatory to a code of conduct when the trader is not". Paragraph 4 covers claiming that a trader, their practice or a product "has been approved, endorsed or authorised by a public or private body" where the claim is false or the terms of that approval are not being complied with.
So a false badge is a banned practice, not a grey area. But nobody polices every van, and every scheme named above keeps a register you can search in a minute. Search it.
What to do next
Work out which of the three groups your trade falls into: statutory register, competent person scheme, or nothing. Then do the one check that applies before you contact anyone — it takes less time than reading a page of reviews and it tells you something a review cannot.
Every category page on this directory states, for that trade specifically, what UK law requires and how to verify it. Note that this directory publishes no ratings, no star scores and no customer reviews. Every submission is checked before it appears, which is a check on the listing, not an endorsement of anyone’s work. The registers above are where endorsement, where it exists at all, actually comes from.