Clearview National July 2015 - Issue 164 | Page 82

BUSINESSNEWS

Protecting the
Tradesperson
The Home Improvement Guarantee
(HIG) scheme has received an
avalanche of publicity in national and
regional papers in the last few months
and now is seeking to expand its
network of approved builders and
tradespeople to accommodate for
the soaring demand for builders.
»»The scheme offers
tradespeople an immediate
competitive advantage through
protecting customer’s payments.
What this means is customers
commit money into an
independently regulated account
ahead of the tradesperson doing
any work.
This ensures that tradespeople
are protected from “cowboy
customers” who commission work
they cannot afford.
The HIG requires that
member tradespeople undergo a
background check with a small
fee, which is refundable from
the income paid on their first
two jobs provided by the HIG
network.
HIG is a Trading Standards
approved scheme which involves
the head office sourcing builders
from all over the country to quote
for jobs ranging from kitchen/
bathroom projects to entire
rebuilds/renovations.
Almost 300 builders have
already signed up to the scheme,
which works like this:
First, the work is split up into
various stages, and a timescale
or deadline is agreed on for
completion of each stage, and the