Is Trade Accreditation Worth It?
Written by James Walker · Last reviewed 16 August 2026
James Walker has 2 degrees in construction (BSc (Hons) Building Surveying · MSc Environmental Design of Buildings) and an extensive background in issue resolution, resolving over £4 billion of consumer issues.
The short answer
- Some registration is legally required, gas work and notifiable electrical work. That is not a choice.
- Voluntary accreditation buys a filter customers trust, a complaints route, and access to work.
- It costs money annually and takes time to obtain.
- It pays off fastest for trades whose customers are nervous, roofing, damp, solar, windows.
- It pays off slowest for trades working mainly through builders rather than homeowners.
On this page
Legally required versus voluntary
Required: Gas Safe for gas work. A competent person scheme, or building control notification, for notifiable electrical work. MCS if your customer wants the Smart Export Guarantee.
Voluntary: TrustMark, Buy with Confidence, trade bodies like NFRC, and directory schemes.
Conflating the two is common. Displaying a trade body logo does not satisfy a legal registration requirement.
What voluntary accreditation actually buys
A filter. Someone has checked your business before the customer did. On larger domestic jobs this matters more every year, as consumer guidance increasingly tells homeowners to verify on the scheme's register.
Access to work. Some local authority, housing association and grant-funded work requires it. Retrofit and energy efficiency funding routinely requires TrustMark. If you want that work, the decision is already made.
A complaints route. Counterintuitively an advantage, a dispute handled through a scheme beats one that goes to court or to a review site.
When it does not pay
If you work almost entirely for builders as a subcontractor, your customer is a builder, and builders care about whether you turn up and do good work. A TrustMark logo does not affect that relationship.
If your diary is full on referrals and you have no interest in grant-funded work, the annual fee buys you very little.
Be honest about which you are before paying.
What it costs
Annual fees, plus assessment costs, plus time, the paperwork and the site assessment are real work.
Set against that: the jobs you can bid for and the customers who filter you in.