‘We lost £14,000’: can a new clampdown stamp out cowboy builders?

In hindsight, Sheri Ingram, 35, can see the red flags. Lee Slocombe, a builder hired to renovate her ex-boyfriend’s home in the south Wales valleys, offered to do the work cheaply because he had materials left over from another job, then asked for money upfront to buy additional supplies.

“At the time, we believed him,” says Sheri, who was in her early 20s when it happened, and had just left university. The couple budgeted about £8,000 for work that included removing a supporting wall and building an extension with a balcony.

Within weeks, the house had been ripped apart. “He pulled up the floorboards and removed the floor joists – he said they had wood rot and needed to come out – took out the staircase, took down the walls, and removed the ceiling,” Ingram says. “The first floor was pinned up using metal poles, and he threw the rubble out the back.”

Slocombe kept finding problems and asking for more money, so Ingram’s then boyfriend borrowed another £6,000 from family. By the end, the couple had handed over about £14,000. The builder gave various excuses about where the money had gone and said he was expecting a medical payout for an injury suffered on another job, which he would use to repay them. He even turned up one day in a sling and said he needed a few weeks off. Then, after about six weeks, he disappeared.

Slocombe, from Swansea, was jailed for six years in February after defrauding nine victims of £400,000 – his latest conviction in a decade of offending. Ingram’s case was part of a previous trial.

Ingram is one of many customers who have lost money to cowboy builders. In July, Citizens Advice said 4.8 million homeowners had a problem with a home repair job in the previous 18 months, from unfinished or unsafe work, to disputes with traders. About 1.7 million had to pay more to fix earlier work, or had been overcharged, losing an average of £750 each. For one in 10, the extra cost topped £5,000.

Among Andy Burnham’s first promises as prime minister was a crackdown on rogue builders, with a register of trusted traders scheduled to go live this month.

The government is also backing a Trusted Payment app, endorsed by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. It will create a “fair contract between trade and consumer”, says its director, James Walker.

Under the system, milestone payments are delayed by 24 hours, giving time to cancel if consumers feel under pressure, with payments for completed work held in escrow by the Dispute Resolution Ombudsman until the job is finished to both parties’ satisfaction. Projects costing more than £2,500 are covered by a two-year warranty. Traders who fail to follow ombudsman decisions can be banned from the app.

Walker says the aim is to create a “trusted network for consumers” while helping reputable tradespeople win more business.

“We are not going to stop a rogue trader going out … but we are providing a trusted mechanism so you know if you use this process you are protected,” he says.

With the promise of greater protection, Paul Boielle, 82, hopes others will be spared his experience. He had noticed a problem with a corner of his roof when three men knocked on his door. It was soon after his wife’s funeral, and he was caught off-guard and “vulnerable”.

“They said they were doing work in the area and asked if I needed any roofing work,” Boielle says. He showed them the problem. “Before I knew it, they’d taken the tiles off.”

Among the men was the roofer David Vincent, from Orpington, London, who was later sentenced to 28 months in prison. He pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation and engaging in unfair commercial practices.

The men told Boielle the problem was more serious than he realised, and advised replacing the entire roof, quoting £30,000 – about twice what he says it should have cost. He paid a £5,000 deposit.

Roofers arrived soon afterwards, removed the solar panels and tiles, re-felted the roof and replaced everything. The job was finished in 48 hours. Boielle’s son and neighbours were concerned by how quickly it was done, and contacted Trading Standards. An investigation by Hertfordshire council’s Trading Standards service found that Vincent had grossly overcharged Boielle for the work, carried it out to a poor standard, and failed to provide information about the right to cancel.

For Boielle, the ordeal continued after the roofing team left. Tiles were crooked and the wrong capping tiles had been fitted. The work had to be redone and

it took most of the next year to sort it out.

The head of policy and market insight at the National Federation of Builders, Rico Wojtulewicz, says many reputable builders may simply choose not to join Trusted Payments because they are busy and do good work. “We don’t think this is the best approach,” he says.

“We believe every building should have a digital building passport – effectively a logbook recording all significant work, and who did it. If it subsequently fails, or is found to be substandard, that should be recorded against the builder responsible. It would shine a light on companies that consistently do poor-quality work.”