Is Mandatory Licensing Coming for Home Improvement?

What's being asked for

Citizens Advice research published in July 2026, an Opinium survey of 5,000 UK adults responsible for home repairs, found that 28% did work themselves because they didn't believe they could find a trustworthy trader, and a further 26% delayed or abandoned it for the same reason.

It also found something more awkward: homeowners who did more checks before hiring were not protected from problems. The consumer doing their homework doesn't fix this.

On the back of that, Citizens Advice asked Government for mandatory licensing, a single register of traders, and a clearer mandatory route to redress. The FMB has backed the same position.

What would change

Nothing yet. There's no legislation, no consultation outcome, and no timetable. Calls for licensing in this sector have been made before and not resulted in it.

But the direction of travel is worth reading. The Government has separately been supportive of the existing voluntary infrastructure. The Consumer Minister publicly backed the Approved Code Scheme in October 2025, and the Department for Business and Trade has welcomed the Home Improvement scheme and supported its wider adoption.

That points at a plausible route: strengthening what already exists rather than building something new. Which is a much faster thing for Government to do.

The first-mover logic

This is the part that matters commercially, and it doesn't depend on predicting the outcome.

Today, holding an approved code is a differentiator, because most of the field doesn't hold one. It's a reason a customer picks you over two other quotes.

If mandatory licensing arrives, that changes. The standard becomes a cost of entry, everyone has it, and it stops distinguishing anyone.

But the advantage doesn't disappear. It transfers to whoever was already there. Already audited. Already on the register. Already able to say they held the standard before they had to.

What that means practically

If licensing never comes, you hold a differentiator in a market where a quarter of demand is being suppressed by lack of trust. That's worth having on its own.

If it does come, you're compliant on day one while your competitors are scrambling, and you have a year or more of being able to say you did it voluntarily.

The downside case is that you were early. That's an unusually favourable set of outcomes for a decision this cheap.

What not to do

Don't wait to see. The point of being early is being early, and a standard adopted the month it becomes compulsory says nothing about you at all.

Don't treat it as compliance either. A code you join defensively gets used defensively, and the commercial value is in using it to sell.