How to check a contractor in Malta before you sign

The Construction Industry Licensing Regulations (S.L. 623.09, L.N. 166 of 2023, dated 18 July 2023) create a licensing regime run by the Building and Construction Authority. Schedule I licenses three activities:

• demolition
• excavation and piling
• construction

Regulation 4(2) makes clear this catches whoever executes the works or engages the workers who do them — so a main contractor cannot escape by subcontracting.

Since 1 July 2025 the regime is fully in force: contractors carrying out demolition, excavation or construction must hold a licence, and unlicensed operators must stop. By that date the Independent Contractor Licensing Committee had approved 2,265 applications — 924 for building, 832 for demolition and 509 for excavation. Licences are renewed every two years and are only valid once the fee has been paid. That last point matters: a licence can exist and still not be current.

What the regulations do not license is just as important. Tiling, gypsum work, electrical installation and plumbing are not listed as licensed service activities. If your job is purely finishes, the firm doing it is not inside this regime at all, and asking for a BCA licence number will get you a blank look that is not necessarily a bad sign.

The grey zone is in between. The regulations define "minor works" — opening or closing apertures, removing or building walls, trimming with handheld tools only, excavation for pipes or a lift pit — as incidental works rather than major works. Shell apartments very often need exactly that: one wall out to open up a kitchen. Whether that pulls a fit-out firm into the "construction" licence is not something the regulations settle plainly, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If your scope includes structural alteration, ask the BCA directly on 138 before you sign.

2. You cannot look the licence up. Ask for it instead.

Regulation 18(4) requires the BCA to keep a Register recording the licence holder, the issue date, the activity licensed and any conditions. That is a register the Authority keeps — not necessarily one you can search.

In March 2024 the National Building Council complained that the BCA had not published a list of licensed contractors and called for a "readily accessible database" of those legally allowed to operate. We could not confirm that such a public register exists today. So the practical check is:

1. Ask the contractor for the licence certificate, in writing, with the licensed activity and the issue date visible.
2. Ring the BCA helpline on 138 and ask them to confirm the licence is current for the activity you need.
3. Ask whether any sub-contractor doing demolition or excavation on your job holds their own licence.

One published list does exist in the other direction: the regulations require the BCA to publish, in the Government Gazette and on its website, the names of contractors whose licence has been suspended or revoked. A name absent from that list proves nothing; a name on it tells you everything.

3. The Skill Card is not a check yet

The BCA has announced a mandatory Construction Industry Skill Card alongside a Building and Construction Code. As at the Kamra tal-Periti's circular CIR 04/26 of 20 July 2026 — updating CIR 01/26 of 26 March 2026 — the skill-card regulations are not yet in force and are still being drafted, even though a BCA email of 24 March 2026 told periti they would need a card to enter sites from January 2027. At a meeting on 7 May 2026 the BCA Chief Executive agreed that periti need no training course to obtain a card. The regulator intends the worker course to sit at EQF Level 2, while many courses currently on offer are only EQF Level 1.

Translation for a client: nobody can lawfully be excluded from your site for lacking a card today, and nobody can wave one at you as a credential. Ignore it until the regulations are published.

4. The company itself: Malta Business Registry

Every limited company in Malta is on the Malta Business Registry. According to the MBR's own notice, company information can be searched and company documents purchased through its online system at baros.mbr.mt without subscribing to an account. Note the date on that notice — September 2019 — and that we could not verify the current position; there are later reports we could not load suggesting a free registered account is now needed. Either way, the search itself is free.

What you are looking for:

• the company exists and the name on your quote matches it exactly
• the registration number, so you can tell two similarly named companies apart
• who the directors are, and whether they are the people you have been dealing with
• whether annual accounts have been filed, and how recently

A sole trader will not appear there. That is not disqualifying — much of the trade in Malta is sole traders — but it means your only counterparty is a person, and the contract and the insurance matter more, not less.

5. The VAT number

Malta has three VAT registration types. Article 10 is the normal full registration and produces a number with the MT prefix followed by eight characters. Article 11 covers small undertakings and produces a number without the MT prefix. Article 12 covers intra-EU acquisitions and reverse-charge purposes, with an MT prefix.

So: a contractor who is charging you VAT on a quote should hold an Article 10 "MT" number. If the quote shows VAT against a number with no MT prefix, ask. The point is not to catch anyone out — it is that a quote "plus VAT" from a business that is not registered under Article 10 is a quote whose final figure you cannot predict.

6. Insurance

Regulation 4(3)-(4) of S.L. 623.09 imposes insurance duties on licensed contractors. Ask for the certificate, not a verbal assurance, and read three things off it: the insured party's name (it must match the company on your quote), the period of cover (it must span your programme, not end in six weeks), and the limit of indemnity. If you are in an apartment block, your works touch common parts and neighbours' property; the condominium will care about this even if you do not.

There is no official Maltese guidance we could find on how a client should check this. The above is practice.

7. The written itemised quote

This is the check that catches the most problems, and it requires no register at all. A quote that gives you one number for "finishing works" is not a quote, it is an opening position. Insist on lines you can compare between bidders: demolition and carting away, screeds, plaster or gypsum, first and second fix electrics, first and second fix plumbing, tiling by area with the tile allowance stated separately, apertures, joinery, painting, and making good. State which of VAT, waste disposal, scaffolding and hoisting are included. For Gozo, ask explicitly whether delivery and ferry costs sit inside the price or outside it — every load of material crosses on a boat, and that is a real cost that belongs somewhere visible.

Ask for the programme in weeks, the payment stages tied to completed work rather than to dates, and what happens to the price if the Planning Authority or the condominium imposes a condition that changes the scope.

8. References and reviews

Ask for two or three clients from the last eighteen months on jobs of similar size, and ring them. Ask whether the final figure matched the quote, how variations were priced, and who was on site when the owner was not. Visit a finished job if you can.

Online reviews are worth reading and worth discounting. Malta has no official scheme that verifies a tradesperson's reviews, so treat any platform's ratings as one input among several — never as a substitute for the licence certificate, the company search and the insurance.

The short list

None of this guarantees a good job. It does mean that if something goes wrong, you know exactly who you contracted with, what they were licensed to do, and who insures them. In a market where the public register you would expect to exist does not, that is the floor worth standing on.