Qualifications for regulated trades?
My husband has had his own business in the UK for 8 years, fitting out new narrowboats (peniches) which involves a lot of quality carpentry, plumbing, tiling, painting etc. Before that he was for many years a self-employed general builder taking on jobs including building entire house extensions, but also hand-making and installing kitchens, renewing windows, hard landscaping etc. He never gets involved in electrical work or in installing boilers etc. always calling in an expert to do that part of any job where necessary. He has never taken the formal route to obtain paper qualifications, however, and there is the crux of our question.
We are now moving to France and he wishes to register as an auto-entrepreneur. We have read a lot about the handyman status and he could obviously go down that route, however, he would very likely become frustrated if he had to turn down jobs such as fitting replacement windows or making bespoke kitchen units since he is more than sufficiently skilled to do that kind of work. How would we fare, for example, convincing the authorities that his experience is relevant to allow him to register carpentry as one of his main activities - would they understand the connection between boat-fitting and carpentry etc?