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How to check a contractor is actually registered

Anyone can print a business card. Here is what can be independently verified about a Cyprus contractor, where to check it, and what it does not tell you.

7 min read

How to Check a Contractor Is Actually Registered in Cyprus — illustrasjonsbilde

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ByAndreas Papadopoulos· Editor, building and structure

Andreas covers the structural end of the trades: what holds a building up, what keeps water out of it, and which of the two a given job actually affects. He records quoted prices per trade and checks contractor registrations against ETEK.

Published · Updated

The useful question is not whether a contractor is good. Nobody can tell you that before the work. The useful question is what about them can be checked, and whether it has been.

Three things are independently verifiable in Cyprus, and none of them takes long. What makes them useful is running them on the right name, which is where most people lose the thread. A fourth check applies once the job gets large enough to be worth a contract.

Start by getting the name right

Every check below runs on an identifier, and the identifier you are given is rarely the one you need. Before anything else, ask for three things in writing: the registered legal name of the entity that will issue your invoice, its registration number, and its VAT number if it has one. Ask by message, so the answer arrives in a form you can keep.

Two local wrinkles make this less trivial than it sounds. Registered names sit in the record in Greek, and the Latin transliteration on a quote, a van and a website will often differ from each other — the same name can reach you as Ioannou, Yiannou or Joannou. Search on the registration number where you have it, and on more than one spelling where you do not. Second, a great deal of the trade here operates through a business name rather than a limited company, and a business name is a trading style, not a separate entity with its own liability. Which of the two you face changes who you would be pursuing.

1. The company exists and has for a while

The Registrar of Companies is public. You get the registration number, the legal name, the incorporation date and whether the company is in good standing.

What it tells you: the business is real and how long it has existed. Longevity is not competence, but a company incorporated a few months before it quoted you for a structural job is worth a second question.

What it does not tell you: anything about the work. Registration is a formality, not a qualification.

Two entries repay a closer look. Standing is the first — a company being struck off, or years behind on its annual filings, is one whose paperwork nobody is minding, and paperwork is the whole of what you are relying on later. The second is the officers: if the person you have been dealing with appears nowhere among the directors, ask who signs the contract and on what authority.

A VAT number can be checked separately through the EU's VAT number validation service, which confirms the number is live and returns the name it is registered to. If that is not the name on the quote, you have two entities in one conversation and need to know why before money moves.

2. The professional is ETEK-registered

For anything requiring certified drawings — structural work, extensions, changes to the building envelope — the design must be certified by a professional registered with ETEK, the statutory chamber for engineers and architects.

This one is a real qualification rather than a formality. Registration requires an accredited degree and it can be withdrawn.

The practical test: ask for the registration number. Someone who has it will give it to you in a sentence. Hesitation is the answer.

Two refinements. ETEK registers people, not firms, so the number you want belongs to the individual whose signature will appear on your drawings — not to the practice, and not to a colleague who happens to be a member. And membership is held in a specific branch. Architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers and surveyors are all ETEK members, and the branch is what tells you whether this person is the right signature for what you are asking.

3. Insurance actually in force

Public liability cover, in force on the date of your work, for a sum that matches the job. Ask for the certificate rather than a statement, and check the dates on it. A policy that lapsed in March is not cover.

Read four fields on it: the insured name, which should be the entity you are contracting with rather than a director personally or a related company; the period, which should span your works; the limit, and whether it applies per event or as an annual aggregate already partly used; and the insurer or broker, who can confirm the policy is still live. A certificate is a snapshot of its issue date, and policies get cancelled for non-payment.

Where a crew is employed rather than self-employed, employer's liability is the second policy, and social insurance registration for those workers sits behind it. On a site where nobody is registered, an accident becomes a question about your property rather than about the contractor's.

The registration class question

Building and technical works contracting is itself a registered activity here, granted by category and by class, and the class is what bounds the scale of work the holder may contract for. Almost nobody asks about it, and it is the check most likely to matter on a larger job.

Ask for the category and class, and whether your project falls inside it. Where it does not, the usual fix is that a differently registered company fronts the contract while the same crew builds — which puts the entity you verified and the entity on your site in two different places. The contract and the invoices should both sit with whoever is permitted to hold the work.

What we verify, and what we do not

Where we have checked a company against the Registrar of Companies or against a professional register, the listing records which register and on what date. A verified badge means exactly that check on that date — no more.

We do not rate quality, and we do not publish star ratings. Ordering is by what can be documented, and the parameters are published in full on our methodology page. No company pays for position.

What to ask before you sign

  1. A written scope, not a total

    A single number with no breakdown cannot be compared with anything. Ask for the scope in writing and give the same scope to everyone you approach.

  2. Who is actually doing the work

    Main contractor or subcontractors, and which. This matters when something needs fixing eight months later.

  3. What happens if it takes longer

    Not a penalty clause, just a straight answer. How they respond to the question tells you more than the answer does.

  4. Which entity is on the contract and on the invoice

    They should be the same one, and it should be the one you checked. Payment into a personal account for a company contract undoes every check above.

Keep the file

Save what you find — the registrar page, the ETEK confirmation, the insurance certificate — each with the date you got it. It is the difference between a complaint you can evidence and a recollection.

If months pass between quoting and starting, common on holiday-home work where the owner is abroad and the job waits for the cooler half of the year, repeat the insurance check the week work begins. That is the one of the three that expires.

Common questions

The tradesman has no company at all. Is that a problem?

Not by itself. Plenty of capable people here work as self-employed individuals, and on a single-trade job that is unremarkable. What changes is what you can verify and pursue: with no corporate record to read, ask for the tax or VAT registration and for insurance in their own name. The judgement is whether the size of the job matches the size of what stands behind it.

Can I check ETEK membership myself, or do I have to ask them?

Ask the chamber. Whatever a firm publishes about its own members is their account of it, and the point of the exercise is to hear it from the body that grants and withdraws the registration. Give them the number and the name.

The quote is from one name and the invoice from another. How worried should I be?

Worried enough to stop and ask. There are ordinary explanations — a group with a separate operating company, a business name registered to a limited company — and what you should not accept is a shrug. Whichever entity issues the invoice carries the obligation, so that is the one to name in the contract and the one to verify.

Yes, and it is a short job. A recommendation is evidence about one job that went well — useful, and silent on whether there is an insured, registered entity behind the next one. The island is small and word travels, but word does not pay for a rebuilt roof.

Building contractors with verified registrations

8 companies covering this area.

Sources

  1. Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property — retrieved 2026-07-11
  2. ETEK — Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber — retrieved 2026-07-11

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