What to check before hiring a builder?

Before hiring a builder, check five things: insurance certificates, references you actually phone, a written scope, a staged payment schedule, and an agreed procedure for changes. All five, on paper, before any money moves.

Insurance means seeing the public liability certificate itself and checking the dates, not accepting a yes over the phone. If scaffolding drops through your neighbour's conservatory roof, that document is what stands between you and the bill. References mean two past clients you ring and ask three things: did the final bill match the quote, how were problems handled, and would you use them again. People are strikingly honest on the phone.

The written scope should say what happens in every room and who supplies what, down to whether 'new bathroom' includes the towel rail. The payment schedule should follow the work: money released against completed stages, nothing substantial up front before materials are ordered. And agree now how variations get handled, because on an older house there will be some. Every change priced in writing and signed off before the work happens, not settled in an argument at the end.

We hand over our insurance certificates and reference numbers before we are asked, and we tell people to run every one of these checks on us. A builder who bristles at any item on this list has answered a question you had not asked yet.