Sole trader / partial partnership?

NannaH

Husband is going self employed as a gas/heating engineer,  he used to work with someone also gas qualified and thinking of also going it alone, they live in different counties,  he has a lot of contacts and has suggested they work together.  Most jobs, like boiler repairs and servicing will be done (and will be paid  ) individually,  New boilers are where they would work together, splitting the profit. 
The sticking point is (potential) Vat registration if they go official partnership with hmrc,  as sole traders they each have an £85k limit but presumably as a partnership it’s £85k between them?  

 Could they have an official partnership (with partnership tax return) just for the joint work and then just be sole traders for the individual jobs?  They will each have their own Van/tools etc. 

Are there any other options if the above isn’t possible?  

Jeremy535897

This is a starting point in looking at the issues when multiple businesses doing similar things are involved:
https://www.greenaccountancy.com/tax-news/vat-threshold-when-more-than-one-business/

Sandtree

Can't they use each other as sub-contractors instead of forming a partnership?

Jeremy535897

Sandtree said:

Can't they use each other as sub-contractors instead of forming a partnership?

A partnership would give them three businesses, each with a VAT registration limit of £85,000, subject to the aggregation rules I referred to earlier.