16 of 17 North East subcontractor websites don’t show the accreditation details buyers check.

None of this means these firms are short of work. Most win the bulk of it the way subcontractors always have: repeat main contractors, site managers who know them and word of mouth. The website matters at the edge of that network: when a contractor they have never worked for is building a supply chain for a framework, when a procurement team is checking them before adding them to an approved list, or when an AI assistant is asked to name firms in their trade. That is where new work comes from, and that is where these sites let them down.

These are established firms, several of them working for national contractors and housebuilders, and most hold the accreditations a buyer asks for. The accreditations are simply not on the website in a form anyone can check. A procurement officer at a main contractor, or an AI assistant asked to shortlist groundworks contractors in County Durham, finds a logo strip, a gallery and an info@ address, and moves on to the firm whose site answers the question.

Four patterns account for most of the lost marks:

• Accreditations as pictures. Eight of seventeen sites name CHAS, SafeContractor, ISO or a trade scheme in text. Only one gives a level or expiry date, and none links to the register. To a buyer that is a claim; to an AI model it is a file called chas.png.
• No evidence of scale. Only two sites give any indication of package value. A buyer looking for a £500k groundworks package has no way of knowing whether a firm has delivered one.
• No tender route. Twelve sites have no named person. Nine have no tap-to-call number on mobile. Fifteen give only a generic email address. An estimator with drawings to send has nowhere to send them.
• Nothing a machine can read. Ten sites have structured data, but nine of them carry only the theme’s default: a website name and a logo. They state nothing about what the firm is accredited for, what it does or where. That is why AI assistants describe these firms from Companies House, or not at all.

The highest-scoring site did one thing differently: it wrote things down. It lists ISO 9001, EN 1090, UKCA, SafeContractor and SSIP as text, states its execution class and describes its services in structured data. It is the only site of the seventeen that gives an AI assistant facts to work from. It still has no insurance limits, no value bands and no named contact, which is why it scores 10 rather than 16.

Each site was read on 25 October 2026: the homepage plus up to four further pages where they existed (accreditations or health and safety, about, projects or case studies, services). Sixteen checks were applied, each scored one point if the site passes:

1. A page for each trade or package, not one services page
2. Sector or regional pages
3. A projects or case studies page
4. At least one accreditation named in text
5. The accreditation level stated (Gold, Advanced, execution class)
6. An expiry date or certificate number shown
7. Insurance limits stated
8. Company registration number shown
9. Package values or value bands given
10. A capability statement or company profile to download
11. Health and safety figures (AFR, RIDDOR)
12. A named person with a role
13. Tap-to-call phone number
14. A named email rather than info@ or enquiries@
15. Structured data present
16. HTTPS with a mobile viewport

The checks are drawn from the experience and compliance sections of UK main contractor PQQs and the Common Assessment Standard, and are the same checks behind the free Tender Check. They test what a site shows, not what a firm holds; a firm with CHAS Advanced that shows only a logo scores the same on check five as a firm with nothing. That is the point. The sample was drawn from established subcontracting firms from the Planyard construction network and public listings for Tyne and Wear, County Durham, Northumberland and Teesside, across nine trades. It is a snapshot, not a census, and we will repeat it with a larger sample in spring 2027.