Joining a competent person scheme, a government-recognised system that lets certain trades sign off their own work, means an assessor has checked your qualifications and your work against that scheme's standard, usually when you joined and again at set intervals. The scheme keeps a record of that check under a number or a name. Registration is the status the scheme has actually granted.

What "approved" and "certified" claim instead

Those two words suggest someone reviewed your work and put their name to it, but they don't say who did the reviewing or against what, unless the scheme's own name sits right next to them. A customer reading "certified tradesman" on a website has no way to check that claim, because it leaves out certified by whom. A customer reading "registered with" a named scheme can go and look the entry up.

Why the wording on the site has to match the register

A customer who checks a scheme's register and finds no match, or finds the business under a different trading name, has reason to doubt the rest of the page as well. The steadier approach is to use the word the scheme itself uses for its own status, name the scheme, and leave words like "approved" or "certified" for the scheme's own site to use about itself if that's the language it chooses. Details of this kind sit alongside the rest of the identifying information a trade website should carry.

Gas Safe Register is the competent person scheme for gas work in the UK: the body appointed under building regulations to say who is legally allowed to install, service and repair gas appliances. Registration is not a mark of quality layered on top of the work. It is the thing that makes the work lawful.

The number on your website

The Gas Safe Register number shown on your site should belong to the business or the engineer who actually carries out the work. Anyone reading your site can look that number up on gassaferegister.co.uk and see whether it is current, and what categories of gas work it covers. A number that has lapsed, or that belonged to someone who has since left the business, will not match what the register shows when a customer checks it.

What Gas Safe's guidance says about display

Gas Safe Register sets out how a registered engineer or business may describe the registration. A business can say it is Gas Safe registered, but the registration sits with named individuals within it, and the Gas Safe ID card those individuals carry shows a photograph, a licence number and the specific categories of work they are qualified to carry out. What your website says should reflect what that card actually covers.

The wording Gas Safe Register allows is set by them, and it can change, so it is worth checking gassaferegister.co.uk directly. The other details a website should carry alongside a registration number are set out on the details a trade website should show.

NICEIC and NAPIT are both competent person schemes for electrical work. A competent person scheme is a body approved to certify that electrical work meets the standards set out in the Building Regulations, so that the person doing the work does not need a council building control inspector to sign it off separately. Both organisations assess electricians against the same underlying wiring standard, BS 7671, and both allow a registered business to self-certify notifiable electrical work.

What each one covers

NICEIC and NAPIT run separate registers, and a business is registered with one or the other. Each register lists the businesses it has assessed and the categories of work they are approved to certify, such as domestic installation or periodic inspection. Neither scheme puts a business on its register without an assessment, and neither allows a business to describe itself as registered once that registration has lapsed.

How a registration is shown and checked

Both NICEIC and NAPIT publish a search tool on their own sites, so a customer can type in a business name or registration number and see whether it is currently listed. If your website states a NICEIC or NAPIT number, that number needs to match what comes back from the relevant search tool, because a mismatch is the kind of thing a careful customer checks before they call. The registration number belongs on the same kind of page as the rest of your business identity, alongside the details covered on the details a trade website should show.

The difference between the two

For a customer, the practical difference between NICEIC and NAPIT is small: both indicate that the electrical work has been checked against the same building standard, by a body approved to do that checking. The difference that matters on your website is that the one you name is the one you are actually registered with, and that the number shown is current. This page was checked against NICEIC's and NAPIT's own published guidance in 2025. Current registration status can always be confirmed directly on niceic.com or napit.org.uk.

FENSA (the Fenestration Self-Assessment Scheme) is the scheme for window and door installers. It exists so that a registered business can self-certify that replacement windows and doors meet the relevant Building Regulations, without a separate council inspection being arranged for each job.

FENSA

Being FENSA registered means the business has a route to certify its own installations as compliant. It does not mean every window or door company carries this registration, and it does not extend to repairs, or to work fitted before the registration was current.

A website can state that the business is FENSA registered and give the registration number. It should not describe a particular job as FENSA approved, because the registration covers the installer's compliance route.

A customer can check a FENSA registration number against FENSA's own register on fensa.org.uk.

TrustMark

TrustMark is a government-endorsed quality scheme covering a wide range of trades. It checks that a business meets a set of standards, including technical competence, customer service and trading practices, at the point the business registers.

Being TrustMark registered means the business met those standards when it joined. It does not mean TrustMark has inspected or signed off every job carried out since, and a website should not describe a specific job as TrustMark approved for that reason.

A website can state that the business is TrustMark registered, and can show the TrustMark logo under TrustMark's own conditions for its use. A customer can search the TrustMark register on trustmark.org.uk to confirm a business is currently listed.

Keeping the wording matched to the registration

A FENSA or TrustMark registration can lapse or be withdrawn, and the wording on a website does not change itself when that happens. Checking that a site still matches the business's current registrations belongs with the other details covered on The Details a Trade Website Should Show, and with keeping the wider site current, covered on Why a Trade Website Stops Being Any Use.

This page names five separate bodies, each with a different job. None of them are interchangeable, and knowing which one applies to a piece of work is the first step in deciding what you can say about it on a website.

Gas Safe Register

Gas Safe Register is the official record of engineers and businesses legally permitted to work on gas appliances and installations in the UK. It replaced CORGI in 2009. A Gas Safe Register number is a public record, and any customer can check it directly on gassaferegister.co.uk against the name and address of the business it belongs to.

NICEIC and NAPIT

NICEIC and NAPIT are both certification bodies for electrical work, and both operate under the government's competent person scheme, which allows registered electricians to self-certify that certain jobs meet building regulations without a separate council inspection. They cover overlapping ground but are separate organisations with their own registers, and a business is normally listed with one or the other. Current membership can be checked on niceic.com or napit.org.uk.

FENSA

FENSA is the scheme for window and door installers, and it lets a registered installer self-certify that replacement glazing meets building regulations, again without a separate council inspection. It applies specifically to glazing work and does not cover other trades. Registration can be checked on fensa.org.uk.

TrustMark

TrustMark is a government-endorsed quality scheme covering a wide range of trades, and it sits above the individual certification bodies. TrustMark registration can be checked on trustmark.org.uk.

Each of these bodies keeps its own current rules on its own site, and those rules are the ones that decide what a business may say about its registration. Where this page describes what a scheme lets a business claim, that description follows the guidance published by the body itself, and the body's own site is the place to confirm it before the wording goes on a website.