Not Enough Regulation?

Have I gone crazy? Well, yes maybe a bit, but not when it comes to avoiding getting ripped off by people who call themselves tradesmen.

As I get older I seem to get more left-wing. Only until the next election, you understand - and just enough to be sensible about what needs to be touched by the hand of government and what needs to be left well alone.

Successive governments have introduced a swathe of legislation to control matters in the financial world and in so doing have shown how inept and inadequate they were when it came to stopping everything going off course.

Yet for the ordinary person these matters can be largely arcane. What really matters is not getting taken to the cleaners when the boiler needs servicing or when a straightforward plumbing job needs attending to.

Anyone can set up in business and describe themselves as a plumber or a builder or a tree surgeon or any number of other 'trades.' Actually, they don't even have to set up, they can merely call themselves whatever they wish without any check on their capabilities. If you are unfortunate enough to need to call in a 'tradesman,' you can expect to feel more than a little uncertain as to the outcome of the job. You may well be made to feel lucky that they can fit you in at all, lucky that you contacted them (the others are all conmen), lucky that they can do it so cheaply at around twice what you were expecting - in fact, lucky! Despite your luck, you still cannot be reasonably sure that any newly contacted tradesman is actually able to do the job properly.

I have never thought this to be satisfactory and in many other countries it isn't allowed. In TonyWorld anyone wanting to set up as a tradesman would have to register with the local authority, prove their qualification, produce public liability insurance and register with HMRC before being issued with a licence to trade. It is this annual licence that would do most to ensure professionalism and particularly so if it carried a simple grading of the services that the owner was permitted to carry out.

In TonyWorld those services would also be regulated within pricing bands but that could bring about the complete destruction of the free market, they tell me.