Gas Safe on Your Website: What a Heating Engineer Can Claim, and What a Customer Can Check

Nearly every heating engineer’s website shows the yellow Gas Safe logo. It is the one credential in the trade the public has heard of, and the one they can check from their sofa in under a minute. That makes it the most valuable thing in the footer. It also means it is the claim most likely to catch you out.

Our page for plumbers and heating engineers says that a badge nobody can check is just a picture, and that registration should be “stated so it can be checked”. This post explains what that means in practice: what the register shows a customer, what the law says about claiming to be on it, and where heating websites tend to promise more than the registration covers. It sits alongside our earlier posts on landlord gas safety renewals and heat pump grants in Scotland. It is not legal advice. Gas Safe Register and your own adviser decide how any of this applies to your business.

The register lists businesses. The card belongs to the engineer.

Most websites get this distinction wrong, and it decides which number belongs on the site.

Gas Safe Register describes itself as “the official list of businesses that are legally permitted to carry out gas work”. A business is registered and given a registration number. Each engineer it employs is issued with a Gas Safe ID card, which Gas Safe also calls a licence card. A customer can check either one.

• The business is checked by its registration number, which Gas Safe describes as “1-6 digits”, or by its trading name.
• The engineer is checked by “their unique 7-digit licence number”, which is printed on the card. Gas Safe adds: “we issue engineers with a new ID card annually, and each new card will have a different licence number.”

So the business registration number belongs on the website and the engineer’s licence number does not. A licence number published on a team page will be wrong within a year, and a customer who checks it will find either nothing or an expired card. The business number stays the same from year to year, so it is the one to publish.

The trading name matters for the same reason. If the site says “Fife Heating” and the register says “J Smith Plumbing and Heating”, a customer searching by name finds nothing and assumes the worst. Give the registered name next to the number, or make sure the number is visible enough that nobody needs the name.

What the law says about claiming it

The duty to be registered comes from the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998. Regulation 3(3) says that no self-employed person shall carry out work on a gas fitting or service pipework, and no employer shall allow an employee to, unless they belong to a class of persons approved by the Health and Safety Executive. Gas Safe Register is that class. The same regulation goes on to deal with the claim itself:

Consumer law covers the same ground from a different direction. Since 6 April 2025, unfair commercial practices have been governed by Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which replaced the 2008 Consumer Protection Regulations. Schedule 20 lists practices that are unfair in all circumstances, with no need to show that anyone was actually misled. Two of them are directly relevant to a heating website:

Section 237(7) of the Act makes it a criminal offence to engage in a Schedule 20 practice, apart from three excluded paragraphs (12, 13 and 30). Neither paragraph 3 nor paragraph 4 is excluded. Trading standards guidance on membership logos and claims of approval picks out this scheme by name: “Particular care should be taken in the use of the Gas Safe logo.”

None of this is aimed at registered businesses getting the wording slightly wrong. The point is that the logo is a legal claim, and keeping it accurate is your responsibility. The same guidance puts it plainly: “It is the responsibility of businesses to ensure that no invalid claims of membership or approval are made.”

The categories are where most sites overreach

Being registered does not mean being qualified for every kind of gas work, and a customer can see the difference.

Gas Safe’s guidance on the ID card says: “not all engineers can legally carry out work on all types of gas or gas appliances. The ID card will list the work categories that the engineer is legally qualified to work on e.g. natural gas, domestic boiler.” The categories are printed on the back of a physical card and further down a digital one. The register’s own search also shows them: “You can also check the gas services a business can offer via our web search.”

Now look at a typical services page. “All aspects of gas work.” Boilers, fires, cookers and hobs, LPG, landlord certificates, commercial kitchens, sometimes caravans and boats as well. Each of those is a separate area of competence. If nobody in the business holds the category for LPG or commercial catering, the page is advertising work the registration does not cover. A customer who checks the register will see the gap. So will a competitor, and so will Gas Safe if it ever investigates a complaint.

Gas Safe also points out that domestic and commercial are not simply about the type of building: “a ‘domestic’ gas boiler installed in a church may still be considered a domestic appliance”, while a large house can need non-domestic categories. If your site has a commercial page, check it against what your engineers actually hold.

Why this is a website problem rather than a compliance one

The services list is usually written once, at launch, often from a template or a competitor’s site, and nobody compares it with the cards. The register is checked every time somebody hires you. The fix costs nothing: list the services your engineers’ categories cover, and nothing else. If you subcontract the rest, say so.

Words the register does not support

Some phrases sound reassuring but claim things the register does not do. Gas Safe’s own description of its role lists what is outside its remit. Two items on that list are directly relevant to website copy:

• “It does not recommend one engineer or business over another.” So “Gas Safe recommended” and “Gas Safe approved installer” describe something that does not exist. “Gas Safe registered”, with the number, is accurate.
• “It does not perform criminal background checks on engineers.” So “Gas Safe vetted”, or any wording suggesting registration means the person has been checked to come into your house, overstates it. If your engineers do hold a disclosure check, say so separately, and only if you can show it.

Two more are worth searching your own site for. “CORGI registered” still appears on older sites and on old van photographs in galleries. Gas Safe Register replaced CORGI in 2009, so the phrase tells a customer the page has not been looked at in a long time. “Fully qualified” on its own is not false, but it is not checkable either. The registration number is both true and checkable, so use that instead.

The English certificate on a Scottish website

This one is specific to Scotland, and it comes from copying English templates.

Many boiler installation pages promise a “Building Regulations Compliance Certificate” posted to the customer after the job. That is an England and Wales process. Gas Safe’s page on the certificate explains that “in England and Wales local authorities must always be informed when a heat producing appliance is installed”, that registered businesses notify within 30 days, and that the certificate follows by post. It then says: “The requirements are different if you’re in Scotland or Northern Ireland”, and later that similar requirements exist in the Isle of Man and Guernsey “but not in Scotland and Northern Ireland”.

A Scottish customer who has been promised that certificate and never receives it will ring you to ask where it is. The same applies to anything else on the page that came from a template written for England. Describe the paperwork you actually hand over: the commissioning record, the manufacturer’s warranty registration, and whatever your own process produces. Gas Safe points Scottish readers to the Scottish Government for the rules that apply here, and your page should do the same.

When registration lapses, or an engineer leaves

Gas Safe says engineers “have to renew their licence every year and their qualifications every five years”. Registration has a renewal date. Websites do not, so the two drift apart.

The usual ways it goes wrong:

• The logo outlives the registration. A business stops doing gas work, or lets registration lapse while it is sorted out, and the footer carries on as before. Schedule 20 paragraph 4(b) covers exactly this case: an approval whose terms “are not being complied with”.
• The engineer has left. The team page still shows the person whose categories covered LPG or commercial work. The services page still offers that work, and nobody now in the business is qualified to do it.
• The old business has been replaced. A sole trader incorporates, or two firms merge, and the registration number on the site belongs to the old entity. A customer checks it and gets a name they do not recognise.
• Copies keep circulating. Directory listings, social profiles and van photos in the gallery all repeat the claim. Correcting the website and leaving those unchanged fixes only part of the problem.

The simple rule: put the website on the same checklist as the registration renewal. When the registration renews, compare the logo, the number, the services list and the team page with what the register now shows.

What the page should carry

None of this needs a redesign. It is a short set of changes, and each one makes the site easier to believe.

• The registration number in text, near the top of the page. Not only inside the logo image. Text can be read on a phone, picked up by search engines, and copied straight into the register’s search box.
• The registered business name beside it, if it differs from the trading name on the site.
• A link to the register’s check page. Inviting people to check takes confidence, and it sets you apart from firms that would rather nobody looked.
• Services that match the categories. Every gas service listed should be one your current engineers hold the category for.
• Named engineers, with a prompt to check them. “Ask to see the card when we arrive. The back shows what each of us is qualified to work on.” Gas Safe tells customers to do this anyway, and a firm that says it first looks confident rather than defensive.
• The logo only where the number is. A logo with no number next to it cannot be checked.
• Wording that says what the register is. Registered, not recommended. Registered, not vetted.

Common questions

Can we use the Gas Safe logo on the website at all?

A registered business displaying the mark of a registration it genuinely holds is what the mark is for. The risk lies in displaying it without that registration, or in a way that suggests it covers more than it does. If you want to use the logo in a particular way, such as on vehicles, merchandise or in advertising, ask Gas Safe Register directly. It administers the scheme on behalf of HSE and is the right body to answer.

We are a plumbing firm that subcontracts gas work. Can we say “Gas Safe”?

Not about your own business, if your business is not registered. You can say that gas work is carried out by a named registered business and give its number. That is accurate, it can be checked, and it is common in the trade.

Should we publish our engineers’ licence numbers?

No. Licence numbers change every time a new card is issued, so a published one goes out of date within the year. Publish the business registration number and tell customers to check the card on the day.

Does any of this apply to oil or heat pumps?

Gas Safe covers gas only. Oil and heat pumps have their own schemes, OFTEC and MCS, and the same rule applies to each: claim only what you hold, in a form a customer can check. Our heat pump post covers MCS and why it decides whether a Scottish customer can get the grant.

Sources and method

• Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, regulation 3, paragraphs (3) and (7).
• Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20 paragraphs 3 and 4, and sections 225, 226 and 237, in force from 6 April 2025.
• Gas Safe Register: The Gas Safe ID card, ID card categories, Find an engineer or check the register, What is Gas Safe Register? and Building Regulations Certificate.
• Business Companion (trading standards guidance), Membership logos and claims of approval, last reviewed April 2025.

All were read on 19 October 2026. Central Systems is not a regulator, a law firm or a gas safety body, and nothing here is a statement about any particular business’s registration. Regulations and guidance change, and the linked text is authoritative where this page is not.