Welcome to DIY Doctor's blog

As early as March 2005 a critique was published by G.D.Holt and D.J Edwards, both academics in the Department of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University, and writing for the Journal of Construction research.  They stated that because of the home improvers fear of ‘cowboy syndrome’, approximately £4bn worth of required domestic repair and maintenance work actually went undone, leading to dilapidation and further disrepair. This contributes to the NERD problem discussed in part 2 of this cowboy story.

(Ref: Domestic Builder Selection in the UK housing repair and maintenance sector)

The report concluded that despite several futile attempts by trade bodies and Government schemes, the best way to tackle this problem was from the ‘demand side’. This means educating the consumers and helping them learn ways to avoid cowboys. DIY Doctor and Service Magic are doing just that.

Independently, the DTI reports (as early as 2001) that over 50% of UK construction companies are one man bands while 35% employ 2 or 3 workers.

Many of these workers are not registered at either Companies House or with HRM and the Holt report above indicates that a great number of these people are slipping under the income tax and VAT radar. They are being allowed to make profits because many home improvers take advantage of cash offers from them. Unfortunately, as further statistics show, the ultimate cost is greater than the savings.

As long ago as July 1999 the Builders Merchants Journal reported in a survey that 89% of home owners agreed that there should be a law preventing unregistered tradesmen from trading and a huge 95% agreed that, at the very least, workers in the building industry should be registered like workers in other industries.

In the Contract Journal, January 2003, a further survey carried out by NEMS, a market research company, showed that 51% of people do not trust tradesmen, 40% say they would never use someone who was not approved and 54% would be happy to pay more to use an approved tradesman.

You can find out more about avoiding cowboy builders by using our Home Improver Protection Solution.

Please post your comments to help us provide the best support we can for home improvers.

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The skills gap reported by Confused.com in the same survey, showed one of the reasons for an increase in the use of UK tradespeople by concluding that Britons over estimate their DIY skill level dramatically when it comes to undertaking home improvement projects.

A survey by Halifax in April 2008 and repeated since, shows that 7 million British households are now living with some form of unfinished home renovation project and 1 million of these have been in this position for more than 10 years. Halifax have christened these people NERDS, standing for Never Ending Renovation Disaster.

The impact of this has been huge in terms of the number of people now turning to “cheap” builders to put matters right when homeowners realise that it is now becoming very hard to sell a house in anything less than perfect condition if a true value is to be realised.

This has placed a demand on the building industry to provide more labour and with fewer apprenticeships available and less money for training, together with a labour attitude of general unwillingness to spend money on insurance and instruction, much of this labour is less than qualified.

An abstract from a report by Martyn Dyson from the Business Journal, Mortgage Strategy on 24^th October 2011, states that there are (mortgage) borrowers out there that want to upsize but do not feel it is possible. A possible solution is to improve and in some circumstances this can be more cost effective than moving.

The example he gives is the £40,000 difference in moving from a 3 to 4 bed property when to have an additional bedroom added as an extension to the property can amount to only £30,000 in many cases.

The homeowner, armed with these facts, sees (in a great many cases) only the savings and financial rewards. Mike Edwards of DIY Doctor Ltd says “Unfortunately, our research and our own surveys show that the home improver very often fails to undertake vital research in commissioning the right tradesperson and the complexities of the build itself.”

“Very often,” continues Mike, “the home improver will not have a definitive idea of what they actually want and will rely totally on the tradesman’s experience to support their basic ideas. Unfortunately because of all the reasons presented in this blog, it would seem that a huge number of tradesmen these days do not have either the experience or the interest to do this. The home improver is then left dissatisfied and most often out of pocket.”

You can find out more about avoiding cowboy builders by using our Home Improver Protection Solution.

Please post your comments to help us provide the best support we can for home improvers.

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This series of 5 blog posts explores the rise in numbers of rogue tradesmen in the UK.  The research was carried out by DIY Doctor Ltd courtesy of the British Library in December 2011.

Rogue Traders of all kinds have been around since time immemorial and will never go away completely but it is DIY Doctor’s intention to bring the portion of this problem which is attributable to the Building Industry to the attention of as many people as possible so that we may be able to introduce a level of transparency and integrity into our industry.

How it all started

The home improvement boom started in late 2007 when internet research company Hitwise, concluded that DIY and home improvement activity was increasing. There was a 25% increase in internet searches for the top ten DIY related “How To” queries in the 12 months to September 2008.

The company said it looked as if people were starting to improve their existing houses rather than move. The interesting thing about the growth in home and garden retailers is that it applies both to DIY retailers, such as B&Q, Screwfix and Homebase, and furniture retailers such as IKEA, Laura Ashley and Wilkinson Plus. Both types of retailer had increased their share of internet visits significantly over the last 12 months.

This coincided with a survey by Nationwide that the average price of a UK home was 16.6% lower in September 2009 than it was at the start of 2008.

According to various polls and research by building societies and insurance companies this trend has continued over the last 2 years and, in information released by Survey of English Housing, Communities and Local Government, a staggering 56% of all mortgage owner equity released from properties in England is spent on home improvement and renovations.

However, according to a survey by Confused.com in July 2008, 6 million adults (10% of the population!) admitted to having a disaster of some kind in the home with DIY mistakes, with 10% of those responding admitting the mistake was so bad they had tried to claim off their home insurance.

You can find out more about avoiding cowboy builders by using our Home Improver Protection Solution.

Please post your comments to help us provide the best support we can for home improvers.

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Following an investigation, there will be a ban on excessive credit and debit card surcharges introduced by the end of 2012.

This means that any consumers buying items or tickets online will only be charged a minimum cost, which has been established as up to 20p for a debit card transaction and 1-2% of the total price for credit cards.

Many of us have found that often, as you fill in details for your purchase and proceed to the checkout on  a website, you only get to find out about the extra charges when you tick a box to pay by card, and often these charges are pounds not pence extra! Airline companies appear to be some of the worst, adding ‘administration fees’ of up to £12. One example is Ryanair who charged a customer £6 per person, per journey, so for a family of six, charges came out at £72!

The Government announcement has happened due to Which? putting in a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading. The executive director at Which?, Richard Lloyd, says  “The Government’s decision to ban rip-off debit and credit card surcharges is a huge victory for consumers.

“This announcement goes further than the Office of Fair Trading’s proposals, finally putting an end to these unfair charges. More than 50,000 people supported our campaign to see these fees stamped out.”

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With lots of the population doing a lot of travelling over the next couple of weeks, we thought we would put together a list of essentials to make sure you have in your car.

• A decent ice scraper and de-icer
• Hazard Triangle to warn other drivers if you have had an accident.
• Torch – a small LED torch is great or consider a wind up torch in case the batteries fail.
• A blanket or sleeping bag for warmth if you have to spend time in the car due to a breakdown.
• Tow-rope (one that should stay in the car all year round maybe!)
• A shovel and possibly even a small bag of rock salt in case you get stuck.
• First aid kit (plus, very importanty if you are travelling far, a supply of any medication you need to take on a regular basis)
• Extra warm clothes in case you break down – hats, gloves, extra socks and wellies are a good idea.
• Make sure if you have a mobile phone that it is fully charged in case you need to call for help.
• Drinks and snacks! Stock up on a few muesli bars and some dried fruit in plastic containers will keep you going. Also, pack a flask with a hot drink or some high-energy drink.
• Roadside assistance membership is also obviously recommended in case you get stranded.

Although we would naturally store this emergency kit in the boot of the car, in actual fact as many accidents involve a rear collision, it would be better yo keep it in the car preferably in the passenger footwell if possible.

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