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The National Home Improvement Council (NHIC) are calling for VAT to be removed from all Home Improvement work.

The NHIC claim the 20% rate is proving a deterrent to many homeowners when it comes to employing workmen. They will soon set up a petition to gauge public reaction to this proposal, and we will keep you informed when they release details.

In DIY Doctor’s opinion this would stimulate the building industry; even if the rate of VAT was cut to 5% for Home Improvements it would make the cost of legal works more affordable. This would help to stop the trend of the unsuspecting public employing rogue traders who often carry out cash jobs to evade paying VAT. Customers avoiding VAT are exposing themselves by effectively signing away any guarantees on materials and workmanship when they pay this way.

The other consequence of a lower VAT rate would be that reputable builders would be operating on a more level playing field, so that the many honest and responsible builders are not excluded from the bidding by homeowners who are cutting corners in this way. This could help squeeze out Rogue Traders from the marketplace entirely. Mike Edwards from DIY Doctor says “It is much easier for a homeowner to see that paying a little extra for peace of mind is good value for money, a Cowboy Builder offering to save them nearly a quarter of their bill in taxes sometimes proves too much temptation, especially in the current economic climate”. For links to reputable tradesman through Trustmark please click here, and read more about the Trustmark scheme.

It must be preferable for the government to collect more taxes at a lower rate than to accept the current black market which is costing the country in non-payment of taxes; honest builders in employment; and the public who are unwittingly employing the Cowboys to save money.

You can find out more information on how to avoid Cowboy builders by clicking through to the DIY Doctor Home Improver Protection Solution (HIPS).

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You are not always going to have the skills or the time to DIY. When you employ a tradesman to do the work that you can’t, how do you equip yourself to get the job you deserve from the experts?

The video on the link below shows a homeowner coming back to a tiling job that is poorly done.

Unfortunately we are unable to display the video as the embed feature has been disabled but if you are interested in viewing go to YouTube and search for “Bathroom tiling disaster” and find the video by “theba123″

Towards the end of the video the person filming comments that ‘this is why I don’t get DIY things done, because I hate it’. This illustrates the helplessness that people feel when they trust an ‘expert’ who doesn’t deliver what they promise. The clip also illustrates the concern they feel about the confrontation that is necessary to resolve the situation.

One thing that you can do when instructing tradespeople to do work is to read up on our project pages and watch our videos to see how work should be done. Even though you are not going to do the work yourself, you will be able to understand why a tradesman is doing things, and what to query if he is not doing them.

The bathroom shown in the video will not have a waterproof surface because the grout is insufficiently applied between the tiles. The grout is the point that is most vulnerable to water ingress.

Our project on tiling explains how to use tile spacers properly, to get tiles evenly spaced and even, and why it is important to allow enough space between the tiles to allow for grout to be effectively applied. Read more information about how to tile using ceramic tiles here.

If you are worried about doing a job like this yourself, you can find great quality, insured tradespeople in our Trustmark directory.

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As you know DIY Doctor has been working with TrustMark to improve the customer experience when homeowners employ tradesmen, to give them to tools necessary to avoid employing a Cowboy Builder. Now you can make use of a new TrustMark App to ensure you ask all the right questions of your builder before you sign a contract, and start work.

We announced the release of our Desired Outcome Contract last year. Click here to download your free copy, which details what is expected from the homeowner and the contractor at each stage of your build, but what about the questions you should ask so you can set this up and just as importantly, the answers you should expect?

TrustMark have devised their app so that anyone can use it from the novice first time buyer, to the committed self-builder. Even seasoned developers can use it as a prompt and record keeper when discussing building works. This will make it even easier to write your contract, taking you through the process of the build step-by-step to make sure you don’t forget to ask anything.

Liz Male, Chairman of TrustMark, explains “In 11 easy steps, the app creates an instant record of the conversation. It prompts questions and provides advice at every stage telling you what to look out for and your consumer rights.  You can record what is agreed using text, photos and record a brief audio note, and then email a copy to yourself and the tradesman.”

Our founder, Mike Edwards, was at the launch of the app which was announced by Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, at a reception in Westminster attended by trade bodies and consumer protection groups.

At the launch, Vince Cable said “The newly launched application provides another useful tool to consumers by bringing TrustMark’s expert guidance directly to householders through the latest innovative channels.”

He was at pains to point out that the majority of Trades are honest and professional. He and Mike agree that it is time that the building industry is regulated to protect consumers and to improve the perception of the industry in the public opinion.

Mike Edwards of DIY Doctor says “This recording of your meeting is likely to be something that a good builder will welcome and a bad builder will shun”.

DIY Doctor will continue to push for more tools for Cowboy Control and hope to work with the Government directly as well as continuing to work with TrustMark to achieve this goal.

 
Download the app: www.trustmark.org.uk/apps 
Or if you have an iPhone or iPad download it off the iTunes link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tradesman-conversation-recorder/id524650511?ls=1&mt=8

A paper copy of the questions and guidance is also available to download: www.trustmark.org.uk/apps/print/

For further information about TrustMark visit:
www.trustmark.org.uk/latest-news/press-releases/trustmark-latest-key-facts

Watch the ‘Talk to your Tradesman’ video at: www.youtube.com/user/trustmarkuk/videos

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Everything preceding this blog post explains the number of complaints against tradespeople in the UK. Unfortunately the problem of unsatisfied customers is further expanded by the home improver doing little research into the actual project they want doing.

Way back in 1990, in a paper called Building Procurement, A. Turner summed up the problem succinctly when he stated “All things being equal, as any customer knows, you can probably have what you want if you know what it is. If you do not know exactly what you want, you will probably end up with partly, or totally, what you don’t want.”

Home owners rely on builders to sometimes read their minds when, full discussion at the outset, via a medium such as the DIY Doctor Desired Outcome Building Contract will remove any doubt in the home improver’s mind.

The Which report of August 2011 concluded that 2.5 million people have had a dispute with a builder or decorator in the last 3 years and the most common disagreement was the quality of the work.

Other complaints were mostly about bad timekeeping by traders and properties being left very untidy. The report also states that 25% of homeowners went ahead with the work despite not receiving a written quote or contract from the trader.

Finally the report concludes that almost 20% of complaint cases in 2010 ended up in court.

As if all those statistics were not bad enough, Trading Standards reports that in 2011 £170m was stolen by cowboys in 2010 through taking deposits and not finishing work

DIY Doctor’s own survey in October 2011 showed

• 76% of people who receive more than one quote are confused as to why there is such extensive variation
• 1 in 3 homeowners who have had work done had problems with the contractor they chose
• Next year 43% of home improvers plan a garden makeover of some kind and there has been a huge increase in complaints against cowboy gardeners

In the final part of this story we are pleased to announce that we are working very hard to eliminate the risks involved with employing tradespeople of any kind in your home. Our Home Improvement Protection Solution offers peace of mind with many practical measures that can be taken to protect your home. We have much more lined up.

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

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Experian, a global credit information group, lists over 515,000 companies in a huge number of categories in the construction industry. In its public database, where it uses information from Yellow Pages and other sources, there are categories ranging from Energy Conservation Consultants to Sash Window Repairers.   

However, a 2010 report commissioned by Key Note Market Research lists only 340,000 ‘firms (employing around 2 million people)’ actually registered to the industry through HMRC, Trade Associations, Companies House.

This means there could be as many as 200,000 unregistered companies out there. These are guys that are deliberately getting under the radar in any form of registration including the most basic of requirements, Public Liability Insurance.

The Key Note House building report 2011 states that the output of the housing sector was estimated to be £32.6bn. The private sector accounts for 68% of this output, with repair, maintenance and improvement accounting for 50% of that amount.

This totals £11bn being spent in an industry where, according to the surveys, almost 40% of the industry workforce is not registered as an accountable agency!

From a survey conducted by the Federation of Master Builders in the last quarter of 2010 it is seen that 32% of registered building companies has experienced a decline in the work coming in. This, it was concluded, was due in part by more DIY work being undertaken as well as more work being given to the cheaper, unregistered tradesmen. This in turn was seen to be due in part to the increase in the VAT rate to 20%.

Enquiries to the FBM for renovation and repair work were down 25% in the first quarter of 2011 indicating that a great many home improvers are looking for cheaper ways of getting work done. This confirms what DIY Doctor has been saying for a long time. Home owners think they are saving money by employing unregistered trades.

(Source: Federation of Master Builders, State of Trade survey Q1, 2011)

While researching the number of small construction companies that have public liability insurance DIY Doctor has only been able to find information dating back to 1999 where a commercial insurance for small businesses Market Assessment was done by Key Note Market Intelligence and noted that insurance in general is a low priority for small businesses with public liability being ignored as an acceptable risk.

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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