Government promises crackdown on cowboy builders — but the small print is doing a lot of work

The government says it’s cracking down on rogue tradesmen and aggressive bailiffs, framing it as part of a wider push to ease the cost of living. The announcement, from the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade alongside Sarah Sackman KC MP and Jonathan Reynolds MP, promises a new “Approved Code” for builders from September, plus a system tying payments to project milestones. Bailiff regulation gets a mention too, though with far less detail attached.

What’s actually being announced

Two things are concrete enough to check. First, a government-backed scheme will let households identify tradespeople who’ve signed up to an “Approved Code” — a voluntary standard covering customer service, transparency and how disputes get resolved. Second, there’s a new mechanism meant to protect homeowners’ money during building work, by linking payments to specific stages of a project rather than handing over cash upfront or on the contractor’s terms.

The government’s justification leans heavily on a single statistic: more than one in four UK adults who had home improvement work done in the past 18 months say they hit problems, ranging from abandoned jobs to pressure tactics used against elderly customers. That figure isn’t sourced to a named study in the release itself, so it’s worth treating as a headline claim rather than an audited fact — plausible, but not independently verified here.

So who is actually protected

Here’s the catch: the Approved Code is opt-in. Reputable builders who already do good work can sign up to prove it, which is genuinely useful for anyone trying to vet a contractor. But nothing in the announcement compels rogue traders to join, and there’s no indication yet of penalties for staying outside the scheme altogether. In other words, this helps customers find better builders — it doesn’t obviously stop bad ones operating.

The milestone-payment system sounds more substantive, since it directly changes how money moves during a project rather than relying on trust or reputation. But the release doesn’t spell out who administers it, whether it’s mandatory for particular types of work, or how disputes over “milestones” being met would actually be settled.

On bailiffs, the promise is to “toughen up the regulation” of firms pursuing people in debt, with a stated aim of ensuring fair and respectful treatment. That’s the extent of the detail available. No specifics are given on new powers, oversight bodies, or enforcement timelines, so it’s not yet possible to say what changes in practice for someone facing a bailiff visit.

What it means for you

If you’re planning building work from September onwards, checking whether a tradesperson has signed up to the Approved Code could be a useful (if not foolproof) filter, and asking about milestone-based payment terms is worth doing regardless of whether it becomes standard practice. If you’re dealing with debt collection, there’s nothing tangible yet to act on beyond the government’s stated intent — no new rights or complaint routes have been detailed.

The takeaway

This is a policy announcement with two reasonably concrete consumer-protection ideas and one that’s currently little more than a promise. The builder measures give households a bit more to go on when choosing who to hire, but rely on rogue operators either joining voluntarily or being squeezed out by market pressure rather than by force of law. Worth welcoming cautiously — and worth checking back for the actual regulations once they exist, rather than taking the press release as the finished policy.