From the Front Line

It's a funny old world for builders these days. There's little work around, and to make matters worse a mysterious body called 'The Payment Council' has decided that cheques are going to be phased out by 2018.

As if builders didn't have enough difficulty getting paid. Still, at least your bad builder didn't resort to this.

In all fairness, many builders complain about cowboy customers. There's an excellent discussion on that here.

Dealing with builders can be a minefield - but it's true to say that you need to treat builders as you would anyone else - fairly, professionally and with good grace.