Slower than an automated board and harder to game, which is the whole trade being made.
| Column | Required | Kept off the card |
|---|---|---|
| Trades offering | Trading name, what you are registered to do and with whom, areas covered, and your answer to the 27 August question | Nothing. A trade card is public and that is the point of it |
| Householders looking | Postcode district, what you want doing, roughly when | Your full address, your surname, your phone number and your email |
| Prices spotted | Device, seller, price, and the date you saw it | Who spotted it |
Four steps, none of them automatic.
| Step | What it involves |
|---|---|
| It arrives | Into an inbox, not on to the page |
| It gets read | Against the rule printed under its column, and nothing else |
| It goes up, or it does not | Either way you get a reply saying which, and a refusal says what was missing |
| It comes down | When it is stale, when you ask, or when what it says stops being true |
Anything selling a device with a battery in it, since those sit outside the approved class. Anything quoting for work on a timber balcony as though the permitted development conditions covered it. And anything with a price and no date.
What changed on 27 August 2026, and what do the planning conditions now say about a timber balcony.
On that date the product regulations came into force and the permitted development right covering solar equipment was rewritten, and the rewritten version does not cover plug-in solar fixed to a wooden wall, a balcony or timber cladding. Nearly every retailer in the country still calls these balcony kits.
A trade that does not know that will quote cheerfully for a job needing an application behind it, and the householder discovers the problem afterwards. It is the single most useful thing we can ask, so we ask it every time.