Short answer. Qualification, then scheme registration, then insurance, then the boring administrative layer, then work. Marketing comes last and that ordering is not negotiable: an electrician with a beautiful brand and no route to self-certify domestic work has built the roof before the walls.
This is a practical overview, not legal, tax or financial advice. Registration requirements and thresholds change. Check the current position with your scheme, HMRC and an accountant before making decisions.
1. Be qualified, and be able to prove it
The recognised route in England and Wales is a Level 3 electrotechnical qualification with an NVQ and the AM2 assessment, which is what leads to an ECS gold card. Add the current version of the wiring regulations, BS 7671, and the inspection and testing qualification if you intend to issue condition reports.
One thing to watch specifically: the Electrotechnical Assessment Specification was revised in 2024 and the individual competence requirements it introduces take effect from October 2026. If you are registering with a scheme around that date, ask them directly what evidence they will want from you, because the answer has been moving.
2. Register with a competent person scheme
In England, notifiable domestic electrical work under Part P either has to be certified by someone registered with a competent person scheme or notified to your local authority building control before it starts. The second route costs money per job and takes time you do not have.
NICEIC, NAPIT and STROMA are the schemes most electricians use. Registration involves an assessment of your work, your test equipment, your calibration records and your paperwork. Budget for the assessment itself, an annual fee, and the fact that it will take longer to arrange than you expect.
3. Insurance, before the first job
- Public liability. £2 million is a common floor; commercial and agent work frequently asks for £5 million.
- Employers' liability. A legal requirement the moment you employ anybody, including casually.
- Professional indemnity. Increasingly asked for where you are giving design or inspection opinions.
- Tools and van contents. Not a legal requirement and the one that hurts most when it is missing.
4. The administrative layer
Register as self-employed with HMRC, or incorporate if you have decided on a limited company. Open a business bank account, even as a sole trader, because separating the money is what makes the accounts survivable. If you will be subcontracting to other contractors, register under the Construction Industry Scheme, because being unregistered means deductions at a higher rate.
VAT registration becomes compulsory once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in a rolling twelve-month period, or when you expect to pass it within the next thirty days. Below that it is optional, and whether it helps depends on who your customers are.
5. Then, and only then, the customers
The first six months of work almost always comes from people who already know you: former colleagues, a builder you got on with, family, the electrician who is too busy. That is not a failure of ambition, it is how nearly every trade business starts, and it is a mistake to spend money replacing it with advertising too early.
What is worth doing immediately is claiming and completing a Google Business Profile. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and it is what appears when somebody searches your name after a recommendation. An empty search result quietly kills referrals that had already been won.
The thing almost everybody does too early
Building a website in month one. It feels like progress and it usually is not, because you do not yet know which services you want more of, which areas you actually cover, or what you are better at than the person you used to work for. A site built on guesses gets rebuilt within a year.
The honest trigger is when referrals stop filling the diary, or when the work arriving is not the work you want. At that point a website stops being a business card and starts being a way to choose your customers. If you have reached that point, our cost guide sets out what it involves and our prices are published.