What "Vetted" and "Approved" Actually Mean on a Trade Badge

The law regulates the claim, not the standard

Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 lists commercial practices that are automatically unfair. Four of them are about badges, and they are short enough to quote in full.

Paragraph	Banned practice
1	"Claiming to be a signatory to a code of conduct when the trader is not."
2	"Claiming that a code of conduct has an endorsement from a public or private body which it does not have."
3	"Displaying a trust mark, quality mark or equivalent without having obtained the necessary authorisation."
4	"Claiming that a trader, a trader's commercial practice, or a product has been approved, endorsed or authorised by a public or private body when — (a) the claim is false, or (b) the terms of the approval, endorsement or authorisation have not been, or are not being, complied with."

Paragraph 4(b) is the one most people miss. A firm that genuinely joined a scheme, and then stopped complying with the scheme's terms while still displaying the badge, is caught by the same rule as a firm that never joined.

The advertising rules say the same thing. CAP Code rule 3.52 provides that marketing communications "must not display a trust mark, quality mark or equivalent without the necessary authorisation" and must not claim approval, endorsement or authorisation by any public or private body "if it has not or without complying with the terms of the approval". Rule 3.53 covers false claims to be a signatory to a code of conduct. Rule 3.7 sits underneath all of it: marketers must hold documentary evidence before making a claim consumers would regard as objective.

What none of that does is define vetting. There is no statutory minimum. A badge means whatever the issuing body decided it means, and two badges using the same word can sit behind very different amounts of work.

Four kinds of badge, in descending order of how much sits behind the word

1. A statutory requirement

Some registrations are not a badge at all: they are the condition of doing the work lawfully. Regulation 3 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 provides that "no person shall carry out any work in relation to a gas fitting or gas storage vessel unless he is competent to do so", and that no employer or self-employed person shall carry out work on a gas fitting or service pipework unless they are "a member of a class of persons approved for the time being by the Health and Safety Executive". That is the legal basis of gas registration. It is not a mark of distinction. It is the floor, and working below it is unlawful.

2. A register with published qualification criteria

WaterSafe is the plumbing example. It describes itself as a free online directory and national accreditation body, run with the APHC, CIPHE, SNIPEF and WIAPS, and it publishes what a plumber has to hold: at least an NVQ Level 2 in Mechanical Engineering Services (Plumbing) plus a Water Fittings Regulations qualification, with at least one qualified plumber per five employees doing water supply work. Approved contractors can self-certify certain work and issue Certificates of Compliance. Here "approved" has a specific published meaning you can look up, and we have set out what it does and does not cover in what a WaterSafe approved plumber actually is.

3. A government-endorsed or Trading Standards-approved scheme

TrustMark describes itself as "the only UK Government-Endorsed Quality Scheme for work carried out in and around the home", operating under a Master Licence Agreement issued by the Department for Business and Trade. It is a not-for-profit founded in 2005, and it works through a network of over forty licensed Scheme Providers that register businesses across 115 service types, with around 18,000 registered businesses. Scheme Providers handle disputes and may direct people to an independent alternative dispute resolution provider, and an independent Financial Protection Panel scrutinises the consumer protection on offer.

The Chartered Trading Standards Institute's Approved Code Scheme works on the same principle from a different direction. To be approved, a code must "set clear standards for businesses, include fair complaints procedures, and provide access to free dispute resolution if something goes wrong", and codes require transparent contracts and terms "with no confusing small-print, hidden costs, or nasty surprises" plus clear pre-contractual information in writing. More than 40,000 businesses across the UK follow an approved code.

The common feature of this tier is that somebody other than the badge-issuer sets the criteria, and there is a route to a decision when things go wrong.

4. A private badge set by the body that issues it

Most directory badges are here, and that is not a criticism. A private scheme can be strict, can require documents most people never ask a trade for, and can remove members. It can also be light. The word on the badge will not tell you which, because the word is not defined by anyone outside the scheme. The scheme's own published criteria page will tell you, and every serious scheme has one.

What "vetting" usually cannot cover, on any scheme

Worth being blunt, because it is where expectations break. Vetting is a check at a moment in time on documents a business provided. It is very good at establishing that a company exists, has an address, has identity documents, holds the registrations it claims and holds an insurance policy. It is structurally poor at four things:

• Who turns up. A vetted company can send a subcontractor. The vetting was of the company.
• Whether the insurance is still live. A certificate is a snapshot. Policies lapse.
• Competence at your specific job. Nothing in a document check establishes that a firm has traced a leak under a screed floor.
• What happens next year. Unless the scheme re-checks, and says how often, the badge describes the past.

One more, which is the most practical of all: a badge does not tell you whether a dispute route exists. The CTSI scheme requires free dispute resolution. Citizens Advice notes that ombudsman schemes are independent, free and impartial, but that for a private-sector complaint you can only complain where the business "is a member of the ombudsman scheme". Membership is the gate. Ask whether the badge comes with one.

How to read any badge in five questions

1. Who issues it? A public body, a government-endorsed scheme, a trade association, or the directory itself.
2. What does it require? Find the criteria page. If there is not one, that is the answer.
3. Can I verify it on the issuer's own site? Every genuine register is searchable. Check the firm there, not on the firm's own website.
4. Is it re-checked, and how often? A one-off check at joining is a different product from an annual audit.
5. Does it come with a complaints route, and is that route free? This is the part that has value on the day something goes wrong.

Our position, and what we do not have

We are a London leak detection and repair firm, we hold no directory badge, and we could apply for several. That means there is nothing on our site for you to verify on somebody else's register, which is a genuine gap and we are not going to talk around it. What we would suggest instead is the set of checks that does not depend on anyone's badge: the five free ones, all of which you can run on us in about fifteen minutes.

And the commercial facts, so they are in the same place as everything else: £150 per hour, agreed before we attend, the rate fixed although the total depends on the hours the job takes, no fee for the search if we do not find the leak, and we repair and reinstate rather than finding the leak and leaving. Pricing sets it out.