The protection ministers are promising — already here.
On 28 August 2026, the government announced a nationwide crackdown on cowboy builders: a new Approved Code and a Trusted Payments scheme linking homeowner payments directly to agreed project milestones. It’s a welcome step — more than 1 in 4 UK adults who carried out home improvements in the past 18 months ran into problems, and over £10.3 billion was lost to poor or unfair building practices in 2024 alone.
But the new scheme is voluntary, and won’t be fully live until December 2026. Cavass has been offering the same protection — builder credit checks, staged-payment agreements, and dispute mediation — for over a year already.
One Cavass customer ran a builder credit check before signing a contract and discovered an undisclosed county court judgment against the contractor. He walked away — and avoided what could have been a costly mistake.
