After losing her mother to cancera woman out Essex decided to do something in her memory. She decided to continue expanding her home, which was originally intended as a place to care for her mother.
Still grieving, she chose a builder recommended to her by a neighbor. She had every reason to think she could trust him. After all, how cruel would someone have to be to take advantage of someone in their time of need?
But like the third of adults in Britain who hired a builder who turned out to be unreliable or unqualified, this woman found out the answer to that question the hard way.
The work on her home was so poor that it was eventually deemed unsafe to live in. remortgage and depended on the rest of her family to make ends meet. As anyone in that situation would be, she was pushed to the breaking point.
And then she was pushed past it. Exhausted and broken by events over which she had absolutely no control, the stress became unbearable. Unfortunately, she tried to commit suicide.
Fortunately, she is still with us today. But too many cowboy builders still get away with it. And I will not sit back while they victimize more vulnerable people, hardworking families and genuine traffickers across the country.
Some might dismiss the kind of people who do these things as “wheel dealers” or “chandlers.” But they are more than that. They prey on the vulnerable, they rob our neighbors of their future and, above all, they destroy lives.
They’re fraudsters – and it’s time we treat them as such.
So today we put the cowboys out of business.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has vowed to defend good builders
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How should we hold rogue builders accountable for ruining lives and trust?
Most builders in this country are decent people who take pride in their work and charge a fair price for it. They build our homes, our schools and are always ready with tools in hand when something goes wrong. But the small number that don’t usually follow the same pattern: make a large deposit, do half a job, and then disappear with your hard-earned money.
That has to change. That’s why we’re backing a new system that gives you the ability to hold your money safely and release it piece by piece once the work is completed. Do the work, get paid. It’s that simple. And we also help our good builders distinguish themselves from the cowboys.
Professionals who meet our new standards can show customers that they are doing things right and that they can trust their home. This is another one of our daily solutions to support people with their living costs. According to the Federation of Master Builders, homeowners have lost a whopping £14.3 billion to cowboy builders between 2020 and 2025 – that’s an average of £1,759 per person affected. And when life is so difficult for so many families, the last thing they need to worry about is being ripped off.
So it’s about making sure people have some breathing room when they need it most.
But it also goes deeper than that. It goes to the heart of who we are and the kind of country we are trying to build together – a country built on fairness.
Nowadays that means standing up for the customers who do the right thing and expect a fair deal. And it means standing up for the decent builders and dealers who work hard, play by the rules, and are tired of seeing dodgy dealers steal their customers and give their industry a bad name.
That same principle runs through everything we do. From capping bus fares to rebuilding technical education, if you put in the work, if you treat others with respect, you can expect to be treated fairly.
And if you don’t, you can expect your government to be on your side. That’s the only way we can make people believe that this time it can really be different.
The woman I spoke about earlier ended her story with a message for us: “I implore the government to take action.”
Today I want her to know: we heard you. We are acting. And we will continue to act until people in all parts of this country finally believe in Britain again.
