Would proper regulation really curb cowboy builders?

Weeks went by with little progress and soon problems emerged. Some seem straight out of the Del Boy playbook: shower trays installed the wrong way round, hot water taps plumbed into the cold-water supply, a wobbly bath and no-show excuses that stretched to the builder’s dog’s health. The new boiler never materialised.

After theatrically asking Hewitt to take a seat in her own kitchen, the builder claimed that the house was full of dry rot and quoted £8,000 to fix it.

It was a lie. The next day Hewitt overheard the builder suggesting to his mate that they use the same excuse to ward off yet another disgruntled client. “That’s when things got legal.”

After a trusted trader report concluded it was some of the worst plumbing they had seen in 30 years, negotiations began for a modest settlement. A few days later, however, the builder filed for bankruptcy and no payout was ever made.

Cowboy bathroom: Hewlitt’s bath drained into the shower, the hand basin wasn’t level and the tiling didn’t line up

Research revealed that this builder has had seven unpaid county court judgments against him since 2020.

It’s a move dubbed “phoenixing”: businesses run up debts, go bust and rise from the ashes, setting up a new company six months later. However, because the Insolvency Register dates back only three months, it’s impossible to check if a builder has done this before.

Similar nightmare stories were shared after Hewitt posted her story on social media. One was of a building project costing six figures that was never completed, another detailed large bank loans that had to be taken out to correct the mess made by incompetent builders.

The UK construction industry had a turnover of £439 billion in 2021, accounting for nearly 9 per cent of the economy. The domestic repair, maintenance and improvement sector employs about 60 per cent of those who work in construction. Any person or company is legally allowed to undertake construction work without having to demonstrate a minimum level of competence.

When the issue was debated in the Commons last June, the MP Mark Garnier estimated that a person has to put aside £150,000 to prosecute a legal case, securing barristers, surveyors, solicitors and court fees.

Builders in the UK have never required regulation, although they can be regulated through a trade association such as the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).

Plumbers need to be registered only if they install gas or oil, and there is no ombudsman to oversee work on the existing housing stock (despite there being one for new homes).

Cars are required by law to have an MOT and holidays can be protected by Atol, but in the construction industry — where consumers invest some of their greatest capital — there is barely any safeguard.

The system operates differently in New Zealand. Since 2007 all building work has had to be signed off by a licensed building practitioner (LBP). Issued to an individual (not a firm) after a competency examination, the license is renewed every year and requires passing a skills update exam every other year. These cover aspects such as block or brick laying, plastering, carpentry, plumbing and drainage.

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“No single stage [of a build] can be completed without being supervised by the appropriate LBP,” says Greg Noble, an architect who trained in the UK and is based in Auckland. This applies to new houses and any changes made to existing residential buildings.

“In practice this works very effectively and cowboys are very limited in where they can operate,” Noble adds. “It does, however, have serious repercussions for the cost of the building.”

He estimates that the tightening of the regulatory environment has added at least 30 per cent to the time and cost of any building project — excluding any inflationary increases.

Tom Adams is the chief executive of RedBook, a London-based agency that puts together teams to work on high-value property builds and renovations. “People use us because they don’t want to get their fingers burnt by choosing the wrong guys for their job,” he says. “We operate a complex onboarding process when it comes to vetting contractors because the financial risk is so significant and the industry is filled with so many horror stories.”

The FMB, a not-for-profit accreditation body, is campaigning for a licensing scheme. It has 7,000 members against an industry that is estimated to be 100,000 strong. The vast majority are micro-businesses that work on the repair and maintenance of residential properties. By joining they put themselves forward for monitoring and inspection.

In a survey carried out by the FMB, 78 per cent of consumers said they would like to see a licensing scheme and for rogue traders to be criminalised. “Currently there are no teeth in the industry,” Nicola De Sousa, a director of the FMB, says.

“Major works such as an extension have to be inspected by building control. A bathroom renovation—which can cost thousands — does not. Every other element, from architects to inspectors and the fittings used, has to go through some kind of quality control, but not the installer.”

The appetite to copy the New Zealand approach seems weak, however. A petition was launched last year to introduce statutory licensing and regulation for builders. It underlined the fact that it is too easy for builders to avoid liabilities by liquidating one company and starting another. It garnered only 10,999 signatures and in October last year the government stated that it didn’t support a building licensing scheme, saying that in such a large and varied sector it wouldn’t be practical or cost-effective.

Stewart White owns a building firm in west London. Over his 30-year career he has spent time working in Australia, which operates on a similar level of licensing and regulation as New Zealand.

“Something should be done to protect people from rogue traders,” he says. “But licensing can only work when there is the manpower to properly check the quality. Without that it’s just another meaningless cost to the business and has little benefit for the customer.”

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He adds: “Too often government or local councils have proven to be inept at regulating anything. Their interference in a free market only makes things worse and more costly.”

Noble is equally wary. In New Zealand the ever-tightening regulations have meant that building with traditional materials rather than factory-made products requires costly testing, which is putting people off.

“If every element of the construction process must be supervised, inspected, certified and signed off, the outcome will, for the most part, be benign, sterile and devoid of any real creativity or character,” he says.

For the time being only people who have had their fingers burnt are the ones with enough anger to do anything about shoddy builders. Hewlitt used her home insurance’s legal expenses cover to see if she could get her money back. Because of bankruptcy laws her lawyer concluded there would be nothing to gain.

“All I can really do is hinder his ability to rise from the ashes again by reporting him to Trading Standards, HMRC and the Insolvency Office,” she says.

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