How to find a reliable tradesperson in your area
Most advice on this is written by people who want to introduce you to someone. Here is what to check yourself, whether or not you ever use us.
Check the registration their trade legally requires, ask for the public liability certificate itself rather than a statement, and look the company up on Companies House. Employers' liability is not a substitute for public liability. Then get three itemised written quotes and never pay in full up front. Tradelynx routes work only in its live South Coast towns and says which.
The three checks that actually tell you something
1. The registration their trade legally requires
Gas work: Gas Safe Register. Electrical work notifiable under Part P: a competent person scheme such as NICEIC, NAPIT or ELECSA. Replacement windows: FENSA or Certass. These are free to search and take about a minute. A tradesperson working outside a scheme their trade requires is not a judgement call, it is a legal problem.
2. Public liability insurance, and the certificate itself
Ask for the document, not a sentence in a message. It names the insurer, the policy number, the level of cover and the date it expires. Two things worth knowing: a certificate that expired last month is not cover, and employers’ liability is not the same thing. Employers’ liability covers their staff. Public liability covers you, your home and your neighbour’s car on your driveway. We learned to separate those two properly ourselves, the hard way.
3. That the business is the business
If they trade as a limited company, the number is free to check on Companies House: incorporation date, registered address, whether accounts are filed and whether it is heading for strike-off. A company incorporated three weeks ago is not automatically a problem, but it should change what you are willing to pay up front.
Then, before anybody starts
- Get it in writing, itemised. A total with no breakdown cannot be compared with anything.
- Three quotes where the job is big enough to bother. Not to find the cheapest, to find the outlier.
- Never pay the full amount before work starts. A deposit for materials is normal; the balance on completion is the point of leverage you have.
- Agree what happens if it goes wrong, and write that down too.
- Keep the paperwork. Certificates, guarantees and invoices are what a buyer’s solicitor asks for years later, and almost nobody can find them.
Where Tradelynx fits, and where it does not
We only route work in Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Southampton, and only in the trades we have people for: right now that is builder, carpenter, electrician, handyman, landscaper and roofer / guttering. Everywhere else, and in every other trade, we are still building our supply and would rather say so than pretend.
Two things are true everywhere in the UK, not just where we route work. You can claim a free record of your home and keep every certificate, guarantee and job in it, which is the part that matters in five years when you sell. That is the HomeLynx Passport. And if you already have a tradesperson you trust, they can run your work through Tradelynx wherever you both are, so you get the quotes, invoices and history in one place without us introducing anybody.
Where we do route work, every tradesperson has passed an identity check and had a public liability certificate read by a person here. That is the whole of what our verification means; we do not inspect anybody’s work.