What can a handyman legally do in the UK? Electrics, gas, and where the line is

There's no such thing as a handyman licence in the UK. There's no limit on the value of a job you can take, either. If you've read otherwise, you've been reading about America.

The rules here attach to the type of work, not to your job title or your price. Mostly that's good news. Far more is allowed than the internet suggests.

In a few places the line is hard. One of them is criminal, and one of them is sitting in the back of the van.

The short version

"Notify" means building control has to be told before you start, unless you're registered with a scheme for that kind of work. Whatever the column says, the work has to be safe.

No licence, and no price limit

GOV.UK's licence finder returns nothing for "handyman". It returns nothing for "electrician" or "plumber" either.

In January 2026 a minister told the Commons that the government sees no need for a statutory register of electricians. So the question is never whether a handyman is allowed to do a job. It's whether that kind of job has a rule attached to it.

One odd exception. In Scotland, most councils license window cleaning.

Electrics: more is open than you've been told

No law reserves electrical work to electricians. The Welsh Government's guidance says it in so many words: the Building Regulations do not restrict who may carry out electrical installation work. Which? Trusted Traders says it is "not against regulations for a handyman or builder to carry out minor electrical works".

Three things are required instead.

Competence. The Electricity at Work Regulations apply to the self-employed, in a customer's home as anywhere else. They want the knowledge or experience to avoid danger. HSE's own line is that you can do electrical work if you are competent to do it.

A safe job. Part P in England and Wales, and standard 4.5 in Scotland, apply to all of it, however small.

Notification, for a short list. This is where the nations part company.

England makes three things notifiable. They are a new circuit, a consumer unit, and anything added or altered in the zone around a bath or shower. Everything else is not. That covers like-for-like replacements, adding a socket or a light to an existing circuit, and connecting a cooker to an existing cooker circuit. It covers them in a kitchen and outdoors too.

In Wales the list is wider. Adding a socket in a kitchen is notifiable. So is a socket on an outside wall, anything in the garden, and new heating control wiring.

In Scotland nothing is notified. Work in a house needs no building warrant. Flats are a different matter. In Northern Ireland the building regulations have no electrical part at all.

What's notifiable, nation by nation has the detail.

Notifiable doesn't mean forbidden. An unregistered person can do notifiable work by telling building control first and paying its fee. That fee runs from about £122 to £601 depending on the council, which is often more than the job is worth.

The practical limit is the testing. The standard expects even a small addition to be inspected, tested and certified, on a minor works certificate. That needs instruments and the training to use them. If you can't test what you've added, that's your line, whatever the regulations allow.

Rented homes are tighter. In England, remedial work after an electrical report has to be done by a "qualified person", which the regulations define as a competent one. A landlord who gets it wrong faces a penalty of up to £40,000.

And the prosecutions that do happen are about pretending. In 2025 a trader in Port Talbot put the NICEIC logo on his quotes with no electrical qualification behind it. He got 20 months suspended, under the Fraud Act. There is no offence of doing electrical work without a licence. There is one of claiming a registration you don't hold.

Gas: the line is hard, and it's criminal

The regulations say it in two sentences. Nobody may work on a gas fitting unless competent. And no self-employed person may do it at all unless registered, which today means Gas Safe Register.

There's no exception for small jobs. Doing it as a favour doesn't take you outside the rules either: HSE's code says favours and DIY need the same competence.

"Work" covers installing, reconnecting, servicing, repairing, disconnecting, altering and removing. A "gas fitting" covers pipework, valves, meters and appliances.

Here is where that bites on ordinary handyman work.

• Sliding a cooker out to clean behind it. Fine. Connecting or disconnecting a bayonet hose isn't work, and HSE's code says a freestanding cooker can be moved temporarily.
• Fitting a cooker. Gas work, even on a bayonet. The code is explicit that installing an appliance is work whatever the connector.
• Taking out a hob, or capping a pipe. Gas work. Disconnecting means breaking into the gasway. In 2025 a builder in Merthyr Tydfil removed a hob during damp work and left the pipe disconnected. He was fined and ordered to pay £9,400 in compensation.
• Radiators, valves and pumps. Not gas work. None of them is a gas fitting.
• The boiler case. It depends on the case. Gas Safe Register says a decorative one that lifts off can be removed by anyone. One held on by screws is usually part of the combustion seal, and that's for a registered engineer.
• Boxing in, and blocking vents. A separate rule applies to everyone, not just gas engineers. Nobody may alter a building in a way that makes a gas appliance unsafe. Enclosing a flue terminal, blocking an air brick and fitting an extractor fan are all examples in HSE's code.

"I'll fit it and get a registered mate to check it" isn't a route. Gas Safe Register says both parties would be breaking the law. In December 2025 a registered engineer in Cheshire was sentenced alongside his son for signing off a boiler he hadn't attended.

The maximum penalty is two years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both. HSE says seventeen people have been convicted since the start of 2025. In June 2026 a man it described as a self-employed handyman got a 26-week suspended sentence. He had fitted a boiler in Birmingham that leaked.

Registered engineers have limits too. The back of the card lists what each one is qualified for, such as cookers, boilers or fires.

The waste in the van

This is the rule most handymen break without knowing it exists.

Carry waste as part of your business and you need to be registered. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland there's a free lower tier for carrying your own waste. It doesn't apply to construction waste, and the regulations define construction to include improvement, repair and alteration.

So the old sink, the fence panels and the bath you took out need the paid tier. Natural Resources Wales uses those very examples.

• England: £191.02, and £130.25 to renew every three years.
• Wales: £184.
• Northern Ireland: £180.
• Scotland: registration to carry your own waste is free, whatever kind of waste it is. Carrying anyone else's costs £304.10.

Skip it in England and the fine is unlimited. In Scotland it's up to £5,000.

England's system is also about to change. Regulations made in July 2026 replace registration with permits from 2027.

The other lines

Shorter, because each is narrower.

• Windows and external doors. In England and Wales a replacement window is notifiable, through a registered installer or building control. Scotland needs no warrant, but the standards apply in full.
• Unvented hot water cylinders. Notifiable in England and Wales.
• Wood burners. In England, anything on a combustion appliance beyond repair or maintenance is notifiable.
• Asbestos. Drilling into a textured ceiling coating is non-licensed work, but it isn't untrained work. HSE expects the self-employed to have the right training. Cement sheets from a garage are non-licensed if they come off whole. Licensable work without a licence is an offence.
• Air conditioning and heat pumps. Work on the refrigerant circuit needs a personal qualification and a company certificate, sole traders included.
• Load-bearing walls. Building control approval, whoever does the work.
• Ladders. They aren't banned. The work at height rules still apply to you.

Insurance

Public liability cover is voluntary. Employers' liability isn't: take someone on and you need it, and the fine for going without is £2,500 a day.

What's worth ten minutes is reading what your policy lists as your activities. One handyman policy I looked at covers "basic electrical tasks (non-certified)", and only if they're declared. A job outside what you declared may be a job you did uninsured.

If you're the one hiring

Citizens Advice gets the difference right in two words. For gas you must use a Gas Safe registered engineer. For electrics you should use someone qualified or registered.

So ask for the Gas Safe card and turn it over. For electrical work that's notifiable, ask whether building control was told before it started. And ask who is taking the waste away, because the duty to check that is partly yours.

Where grafter.ly fits

The price list a handyman starts with in grafter.ly has a callout charge, a half-day and a day rate, and a set of fixed-price small jobs: flat-pack, shelves, a TV on the wall, a door that sticks. None of them is gas work or notifiable electrical work.

Where it helps with the lines above is the quote. When a kitchen job needs a hob taken out, the place to say who's doing that is in writing, before you start. What goes on a quote, and what you say isn't included covers it.

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Sources. Licensing: GOV.UK's licence finder and its page on window cleaning in Scotland; and Hansard, 12 January 2026. Electrics: the Welsh Government on electrical work and its Approved Document P; the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, regulation 3; the Approved Document P for England; HSE's electrical questions; Which? Trusted Traders on unregistered electrical work; the rented-sector regulations, regulation 3 and regulation 11; and Neath Port Talbot Council's report of the 2025 case. Gas: the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, regulation 2, regulation 3 and regulation 8; HSE's approved code, L56; the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, Schedule 3A; Gas Safe Register on home improvements; HSE on the ID card; HSE's reports of the Birmingham and Cheshire cases and its September 2026 figures; and Merthyr Tydfil Council's report. Waste: the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011, regulation 24; GOV.UK on registering in England; Natural Resources Wales on fees and who needs which tier; SEPA on applying and on your own waste; DAERA's guidance; and the 2026 regulations replacing registration in England. The other lines: the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004, Schedule 3; the Welsh Government on doors and windows; Approved Documents G and J; HSE on non-licensed asbestos work, training and ladders; GOV.UK on F gas qualifications and company certificates. Insurance and hiring: HSE's guide to employers' liability insurance; GOV.UK on the penalty; Protectivity's handyman policy page; and Citizens Advice on getting work done. All checked 3 October 2026.

None of this is legal advice. The rules differ between the four nations and they change, so check the one that applies to the job in front of you.