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50,213 active UK plumbing, heating & electrical firms

The UK Trades Report 2026: Plumbing, Electrical & Heating Sector Benchmark

A sector-wide benchmark of 50,213 active UK plumbing, heating and electrical companies, profiling business age, legal structure, geographic concentration and certification coverage. We find a fragmented market dominated by sole traders, with the top five postcode areas accounting for 22% of all active plumbing firms.

Key takeaways

  • The average UK plumbing or electrical company is 8.4 years old; 41% are under 5 years old, pointing to a sector with steady new entrants but high churn.
  • Sole traders account for an estimated 58% of the workforce, but only 22% of VAT-registered turnover.
  • The top 5 postcode areas — W (West London), SW (South-West London), M (Manchester), B (Birmingham) and L (Liverpool) — together host 22.1% of active plumbing firms despite covering 6% of UK address points.
  • Gas Safe coverage among plumbing-classified companies is 71%; NICEIC or NAPIT coverage among electrical-classified companies is 64%.
  • Public-liability insurance is universal among VAT-registered firms but drops to 78% among sole traders surveyed.

Headline chart

Top postcode areas by share of active UK plumbing firms (% of 50,213).

Methodology

We extracted active companies from Companies House under SIC codes 43220 (plumbing, heat and air-conditioning) and 43210 (electrical installation), enriched with Gas Safe Register and NICEIC public lookups. Sole-trader figures were estimated from HMRC Self Assessment industry tables and triangulated against the FSB Small Business Index 2025. All postcode density figures use Royal Mail PAF address counts as the denominator. Data extracted between 1 February and 15 March 2026.

Cite this report

APA-style:

Yolist. (2026). The UK Trades Report 2026: Plumbing, Electrical & Heating Sector Benchmark. Yolist Research. https://yolist.uk/research/uk-trades-report-2026

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