20/10/2025
This is a dreadful story, but we would like to offer some general pieces of advice to consumers and businesses when it comes to choosing a contractor for works on your property.
It is so important that before you contract with a company, you check on Companies House website for the following:
---who are the directors of that company?
---do those directors have any dissolved companies in their trading history that have a similar name to the company name they are trading under now? -----sometimes one sees company directors with tens of dissolved companies behind them, many owning large sums of money to creditors. this would be a red flag. these things are easy to check. due diligence is important.
---further, check those dissolved companies to see *how much* money they went under owing (and to whom). sometimes a dissolved company will owe tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds to their creditors (employees, suppliers, HMRC etc). the reason directors would then just brazenly go ahead and open another company with a similar sounding name (and/or use certain complex loopholes to fully change the name of the company in an attempt to trade off the previous company's longevity) is to benefit from the trading legacy of a prior business (before it went under owing thousands) and keep hold of existing contracts. Company Law does *allow* this so that 'the entrepreneurial spirit' within commercial sectors isn't quashed. some would argue however that the protections for consumers from this type of slippery behaviour are too weak. either way, it doesn't mean that we, as consumers and as businesses, can't expend our due diligence and look more closely at the companies due to carry out works on our properties: home and commercial.
---does the company you are using use subcontractors? if so, are they using subcontractors for *your* job? it could even be the case that they are using subcontractors *of* subcontractors and that the *actual chain* is longer than you would ever realise. is any subcontractor they use legally & professionally qualified to carry out the works? have you checked? is the subcontractor insured? who will carry out any repairs if the works are subpar? in some instances, the original contracting company will try to pass on blame to a subcontractor---who may be simply be a sole-trader and may not own any assets----in which case it's possible that your redress would be minimal at best.
**We cannot stress enough that you *must* carry out your due diligence before contracting with a company for works to be carried out on your property/properties**
In the case linked below, consumers were using a government scheme and weren't contracting directly themselves. Although the intentions of the scheme were noble (*to help reduce consumers energy bills*) some of the works carried out were extremely subpar and have left consumers with horrendous issues with their homes.
Insulation programmes costing billions of pounds have led to widespread problems with damp and mould.
