Home DIY

Vaguely on topic, but here's a big post I typed up for elsewhere that was never really seen. Trying to explain why getting tradespeople is so hard at the moment, and why the whole business of interacting with tradespeople is so difficult in the UK. Understand that it's not very well written, and it was mostly down as a cathartic process more than anything, but worth saying I thought.

I'm not going to defend all tradespeople, I'm not going to defend all customers but I hope this sheds some light.

Tradespeople are very busy and demand is high. Wanting quotes is asking people to turn up for nothing, while also telling the tradesperson that they're probably just going to provide you with a figure to compare against other quotes with. If most people get 3 or more quotes, it means that the majority of the time, turning up to quote won't result result in actually getting the job and this makes it a low priority for a lot of people - only one person gets the work out of the three providing quotes after all. Putting a proper quote together also takes a proper chunk of time, especially at the moment where material prices are changing by the month (many guys I know only guarantee prices for a single month right now as a result).

Personally, I do small jobs and I avoid quoting jobs at all, it just isn't worth it. On the flip side: is it ok to no show with no warning? Of course not. Poor communication is a pain in the arse for all involved. I'm not making excuses for people, but I can see why certain tradespeople put quoting as a low priority - it's fairly low reward, and when there is already a high demand, people prioritise paying work over speculative stuff. But again, I stress that it is shit to no show or ghost customers.

I've also said I'll do work for people, and then they've gone totally quiet on me. Or they send a very speculative text, with very rough details, then get annoyed that you haven't taken it as a confirmed booking. No one is really in the wrong, but if I've got a load of jobs booked in, and some pretty flakey half interested text messages, I'm definitely just getting on with the jobs before even thinking of spending a load of time trying to work out if potential jobs are actually going to pay. On top of that, the client wants an absolute fixed price for the job, despite being unable to provide the appropriate information that would make me capable of costing it accurately. So then I can either pull a figure out my arse and see what the client says, or spend time figuring out a competitive price (which takes time and energy, and is still largely speculative) - neither of which are ideal, but if I tell them I'll have a go and charge for how long it takes, the client wants nothing to do with it. They want absolute certainty about the cost, and I can only do this safely by overcharging by a margin so I don't get caught out if it becomes trickier than expected, and then the client thinks you're taking the piss with your price.

Getting a load of quotes and selecting the one in the middle isn't always a good strategy either. You need to do some research and try and get a ballpark idea of how much it should cost. If you're spending 10k on a car, by god you're going to research what you should get for that cash: so why wouldn't you do the same when spending the same on work on your house?! I do not understand how people don't do sufficient research about the work they need done. Is this an extra pain in the arse? Of course it is, but surely it's not unexpected. There are generally guides online for most jobs to help you understand how much stuff should cost, what the specific costs are and just general information about the nature of the work. When getting quotes for our roof, we got some insane quotes - with a bit of research it was easy to see that the middle quotes were unrealistically low, and this was from a preselected list of vetted tradesmen. But once we'd done our research, checked the companies and their credentials, it seemed a lot clearer as to which quotes were realistic in terms of what we were asking.

You can greater ensure the quality of work by getting tradespeople who are certified, members of professional bodies, who's work is insured, and guaranteed for a decent period of time. Unsurprisingly, these tradespeople are expensive and in demand. This shortage of highly skilled tradespeople creates a gap in the market for shittier tradespeople who promise the same level of work for less money - they won't have the same certificates or stamps on their van, but they say they can do it, so people believe them. No matter how important a job is, lots of people will always prioritise saving money over guaranteeing the quality of the work done.
The price of getting certified work done is simply beyond what the majority of people want to pay any way. Partly because in this country there isn't such a high importance put on getting things done properly, and then there's also a market where the price range is so extreme. Being certified, insured, and a member of a professional body adds costs, and being a total cowboy massively cuts them.
And lots of people just want to pay the absolute minimum, regardless of how unwise this may seem.

Another point - anyone can start up a business as a tradesperson, which is INSANE. Because of a long culture of DIY here, anyone can go to a builders merchant, hire a load of equipment and have a go at doing whatever they like. A bit of plumbing here, knock through a wall there, add some sockets where ever etc. In lots of other countries you're not allowed to buy ANY electrical materials unless you're a certified electrician, where as in the UK you can buy everything you'd need for a full rewire down the local B and Q or Screwfix. We have really good regulations and standards, but what use is that if anyone can have a go, and there is little to no enforcement of the regs as work is ongoing? So then you have a split in pricing, you have the prices of the properly qualified and certified, and then you have the prices of the have-a-goers. If you could only legally buy the materials and do the work if you were qualified, the market for getting a tradesperson would be a lot more stable IMO.

It's also worth mentioning that if you contact building control and other relevant authorities, and follow the proper procedures, you could legally do pretty much whatever you want, which is cool but it also contributes to the massive grey area clusterfuck of who can do what. And this lack of enforced standards and mandatory qualifications and training just creates distrust, as clients are left trying to figure out who is trustworthy and who isn't, which just creates a massive culture of distrust on both the sides of the client and tradesperson relationship.
And just to add one final layer of confusion, even after vetting and checking everything, there will still be uncertified tradespeople who do good work for cheap (uncommon, but not nonexistent), and there will be highly certified people who do unsatisfactory work.

Which leads to my next point - our trades have AWFUL training. The apprenticeship scheme is a fucking joke. Too thick to go to uni? Just get on this apprenticeship where you'll be taught nowt, exploited for your cheap labour (you can legally pay apprentices fuck all), and then binned off at the end for the next load of fresh ones coming through. In many other countries, the trades are respected a lot more because their training is a lot more thorough and the standards of work are higher, where as in the UK tradespeople are absolutely derided (because of how common absolute horror stories with tradespeople are here I guess). People dislike the trades because there's such a huge variation in whats available and what gets delivered to the paying customer (and so many get fucked over). It can't be surprising that customer/tradesperson relations are so fractious here in the UK, the customer distrusts the tradesman because of unreliability, and the tradesperson resents the customer because they don't trust them! If we had better structured training for the trades, it would make a world of difference. Enforcing higher standards would benefit everyone. An apprenticeship is in no way comparable to an undergraduate degree in terms of the amount and quality of teaching. You can go and do a 5 week "Domestic Installer" course at a centre for about £2.5k, and apparently that's enough to get you started working as an electrician, it's INSANE. While on the flipside, the process to become an actually qualified and certified electrician is completely convoluted, unstructured and not particularly standardised. If there was a more straightforward and transparent system of training for the trades in the UK (and I mean transparent for both tradesperson and client), I guarantee the market wouldn't be such a shitshow.

Sorry about the wall of text, I genuinely could keep going but fear I'd just look mental. This will also clearly be buried and never seen by anyone.

TL;DR: Quoting is time consuming and unprofitable, thus a low priority for a currently very busy labour market.
Certified tradespeople are expensive, and people don't want to pay.
UK regulations for trades is high standard, but there are almost no barriers stopping people from carrying out work, so you have a HUGE variation in the quality of labour available, which creates a market of labour that is VERY difficult to navigate as a consumer, and increases distrust between all clients and trades from the start.