On 27 August 2026 the government announced two new schemes to tackle cowboy builders. If you're planning a renovation, extension or new build in Cheshire, Chester or North Wales, these changes are worth understanding. They also raise an obvious question. Until the new schemes are fully live, how do you actually spot a builder you can trust?
What was announced
Two things. The first is a smartphone app called Trusted Payments, launching next week. It lets homeowners hold their project money in a protected account, similar in principle to the deposit protection schemes tenants have had for years. The money is only released to the builder as agreed milestones are completed. Up to 100,000 traders across Britain will have access by the end of September.
The second is an Approved Code scheme for the home improvement sector, developed by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and the Furniture and Home Improvement Ombudsman. Builders who sign up have to demonstrate proper standards of customer service, pricing transparency and dispute resolution. The scheme goes live with its first businesses at the end of September and will be fully implemented by December.
The government is endorsing both. Its message to homeowners is simple. If your builder isn't willing to work under standards like these, that tells you everything you need to know.
Why this matters, in numbers
According to the Federation of Master Builders, homeowners in this country lost £14.3 billion to cowboy builders between 2020 and 2025. That's an average of £1,759 for every person affected. The industry has a serious problem and it's been getting worse.
Behind those numbers are families who saved for years, borrowed against their homes, made room in tight budgets, and ended up with a half-finished kitchen, a leaking roof, or a dangerous electrical installation. Some of them lost far more than the money. The stress of being taken advantage of in your own home doesn't come out in the wash.
"Do the work, get paid. It's as simple as that."
That was the Prime Minister's summary of the new payment scheme, and it captures the shift well. For decades, homeowners have been asked to pay large deposits upfront and hope for the best. The good builders don't need money in advance. They need cashflow, sure, but that's what the ordinary flow of merchant deliveries and staged payments is for. Anyone insisting on a huge deposit before spade goes in the ground is telling you something about their finances, and it isn't reassuring.
The Trusted Payments app in practice
Here's how the app is supposed to work. Once you and your builder have agreed the project and the milestones, you deposit your project funds into the protected account. As each milestone is completed, you release the payment for that stage. If the work isn't done to standard, you don't release the money. The app has an ombudsman route for disputes.
For homeowners, this changes the balance of power. You're no longer sitting on your hands hoping the builder returns to finish the job before he moves on to the next one. If he wants paying, he finishes the work.
For good builders, this changes nothing meaningful. We're already working on milestone-linked payments in practice, because that's how any properly-programmed job works. Deposit for materials on order, staged payments as sections complete, retention held back until snags are closed. The app just formalises what should have been standard practice all along.
The Approved Code scheme, and what it actually requires
The Approved Code is the more substantive piece. To become an accredited business a builder has to prove three things.
- Transparency in pricing. No black-box quotes, no vague "materials and labour" line items, no hidden margins buried in the numbers.
- Standards of customer service. Written contracts, clear communication, honest programme reporting, proper handover procedures.
- Dispute resolution. A clear route for the client if something goes wrong, backed by the Furniture and Home Improvement Ombudsman.
Trade press coverage has already flagged that proper insurance is likely to become a condition of market access as the scheme matures. That's a good thing. Any builder unwilling to show you their public liability, employer's liability and contract works certificates before you sign a contract shouldn't be on your shortlist.
The Approved Code isn't compulsory. But once it's up and running, homeowners will very reasonably start filtering their shortlists by whether a builder is on the register. If you're not on it, you're going to have some explaining to do.
What to actually check for right now
The government's schemes won't be fully live until December. So here's what a homeowner should be doing in the meantime, when weighing up a builder for a Cheshire, Chester or North Wales project.
Ask how they price
A builder who says "here's a fixed price, take it or leave it" isn't necessarily a cowboy. But a builder who can't or won't explain what's inside that number is a warning sign. On a bigger job you want to see the breakdown. Labour, materials, sub-contractor packages, preliminaries, provisional sums for the undesigned items. If the number doesn't break down, ask why.
Ask how they'll handle variations
Variations happen on every project. What matters is how they're priced and communicated. The right answer is "we'll price it before we do it, share the cost with you, and get your written approval." The wrong answer is any version of "we'll add it up at the end and let you know."
Ask to see certificates
Companies House registration, public liability cover, employer's liability cover, and ideally contract works insurance too. A proper builder has them all and will happily send you copies. If it takes three chases to get a certificate, you've learned something.
Ask for real references, and follow them up
Not "here's a five-star testimonial on our website" but "here are the names and phone numbers of the last three clients we finished a job for." Then ring them. Ask specifically about programme, cost variations, snag handling, and how the builder behaved when something went wrong. That last one is the tell.
Look for weekly cost reports
Or something equivalent. On the open-book model that Built Clear runs, every merchant invoice and every sub-contractor invoice is passed to the client at cost, and a running cost report is available in real time on Buildertrend. You should never have to ring your builder to ask what's been spent this week. It should be visible.
Watch for the deposit ask
Small mobilisation payments are fine. Large upfront deposits are not. If a builder needs your money before he can even start ordering, he isn't running a stable business. That's the sort of builder the Trusted Payments app is designed to weed out.
How Built Clear already works this way
Built Clear has been running on the open-book model from day one. Not because we saw a government scheme coming. Because we set the business up specifically to avoid the adversarial dynamic that fixed-price contracts create.
Here's what that looks like in practice.
- A guide price from your plans, built line by line so you can see labour, materials and preliminaries transparently. Not a padded single figure with a "trust me" attached.
- A fixed management fee for the whole project, agreed at the start based on the programme, and locked. It doesn't move as costs move. You know what we make from day one.
- Every merchant and sub-contractor invoice passed to you at cost. Plus a flat 10% for our overheads and profit. That's it. No hidden markup on materials, no supplier kickbacks, no phantom line items.
- Weekly cost reports on Buildertrend, with the running spend, the upcoming schedule, and every invoice available for you to audit. From your phone, at any time.
- Full insurance disclosed at contract stage, or earlier if you want to see it before you commit. Public liability, employer's liability, contract works.
- A twelve-month snag support period from handover, plus a full handover pack with all sub-contractor guarantees, appliance manuals and building-control sign-off documents.
Milestone-linked payments? That's how we already invoice. Transparency in pricing? That's the entire business model. Dispute resolution? Under open-book there's rarely anything to dispute, because you saw every cost as it happened.
We'll be signing up to the Trusted Payments app as soon as it's live for traders, and we'll be applying for Approved Code accreditation as soon as applications open at the end of September. Not because we need to change anything about how we work. Because the accreditation makes it easier for good homeowners to find good builders, which is exactly what the industry needs.
The bigger picture
For decades, the way house-builds and renovations were priced has protected the builder more than the client. Fixed-price contracts, big upfront deposits, black-box pricing, "just trust me" reference chains. The government's crackdown formalises what a lot of us in the industry have been saying for years. That model is broken. It's cost families £14.3 billion in five years. It has to change.
The change is welcome. But the underlying idea, that a builder should show his numbers and be paid as he delivers, isn't new. It's just been missing from the mainstream. If you're planning a project in Cheshire, Chester or North Wales, and you want a builder who was already working to these standards long before the government put a name on them, we should talk.
Read more about the open-book model, browse the builders in Cheshire or builders in Chester service pages, or see our 2026 Cheshire build cost guide for real per-square-metre pricing across extensions, renovations, barn conversions and new builds.