Rogue Builders

Debate between Mark Garnier and Jim Shannon

Thursday 13th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mark Garnier]

I will talk about that in my speech. The fundamental problem is that, at the moment, the only course of redress is through the court system, and it is not good enough.

The FMB does a lot of work in this area, and it is worth looking at some of its statistics. Thirty-seven per cent of customers report unreliability, and many of them cite apparently unqualified operators. Nearly a quarter—that is 25%—of all customers have lost money to rogues, with losses averaging £1,760, but in many cases the amount is far higher. The national loss is horrific. The FMB estimates that, over five years, homeowners have lost an astonishing £14.3 billion to unreliable builders, putting an astonishing burden on the housing market and households. It turns out that young adults are more at risk, with 33% scammed by rogue traders found via social media.

The consumer is not the only victim of rogue or cowboy builders. Within the industry, many find themselves a victim of the same problem. Subcontractors find they are not paid, and it is the same for merchants. Plant hire companies are frequently the victims of theft and abuse of equipment. Alarmingly, health and safety is a low priority among many small and medium-sized building firms operating in the RMI market.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate, and he is absolutely right. In Northern Ireland, consumer protection against rogue builders involves preventive measures, official reporting channels and legal recourse through the Consumerline service, trading standards and the small claims court. The reality is that those protections are difficult to navigate, and they are often off-putting for people who are not used to filling in forms and writing things out. Does the hon. Member agree that there must be a more straightforward approach? People, who are often vulnerable and need support, should not have to jump through hoops.

[Mark Garnier]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The current system does not satisfy people in any way, shape or form. Also, there is an inequality of risk, which I will come to in my speech.

Although large firms working on major commercial and civil engineering projects have embraced health and safety legislation, a blitz of small refurbishment sites by Health and Safety Executive inspectors in 2016 found that a stunning 49% of sites fell below the standards set for compliance with health and safety requirements. More alarmingly, that cavalier attitude to health and safety reveals the potential problem of cowboy builders leaving dangerous sites. When someone has an extension built, might they be risking life and limb when they climb those stairs? Poor-quality building results in not just shoddy work, but dangerous and potentially fatal work.

Rogue builders have an effect beyond their own unhappy activities. By undercutting reputable, high-standard builders that make up the majority of the market, they force them to cut their margins. Price competition is fine, but not when a worthwhile and reputable SME builder is competing against someone with no care for safety, honesty or customer satisfaction. Given that the RMI market is dominated by occasional customers—we are not doing this very often—it is quite likely that the key element of choice is price. Unhealthy price competition drives down standards, even if reputable firms are unhappy being forced to cut standards to compete.

In an extreme example of the problem—this is an important point—I recently met Andrew Bennett, who had engaged a local firm in Liverpool to refurbish a six-bedroom property that he owned—a job that was to be worth around £100,000. He checked out the firm and was happy with references and testimonials. He engaged the firm, but it turned out that the work was dangerously below standard. When he started to seek redress, he discovered that the company in question was not what he had been led to believe. It was a rogue builder passing off as a well-known, reputable company. Moreover, this dubious company had nine county court judgments against it and therefore had no money to pay the award to Mr Bennett when he won his case.

That company was passing off as another. It was seeking to take money off an individual customer by deliberately misleading him, and it failed to deliver the work contracted by that customer under the cover of misleading him—fraud, by any other name, or by the actual name. Mr Bennett went to the police, who told him that it was a civil matter. He tried all the avenues available to him to get this individual bang to rights, but to absolutely no avail. The company continues to rip off people, in full knowledge of the local law enforcers, trading standards, the local council and planning department, and multiple victims of its activities.

Space Industry

Debate between Mark Garnier and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mark Garnier]

I thank all Members who made a contribution to the debate. It has been fantastic to hear from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Congleton (Sarah Russell), for St Ives (Andrew George), for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), as well as the Front-Bench contributions from the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith).

It is a great pleasure to see so many different people and so many new MPs contribute to this debate from such diverse parts of the world, rather than just hearing the same old characters talking about the same old stuff—

[Jim Shannon]

I’m always here.

[Mark Garnier]

The hon. Gentleman is always here.

A number of important things have come up in this debate, one of which is the importance of the clusters. We have heard talk the north-east cluster and the Cornwall cluster. For me, Cornwall is incredibly important: as the hon. Member for St Ives knows, my spiritual home is in Newlyn. My grandparents were Newlyn school artists, and I was brought up looking across Mount’s bay to Goonhilly downs. We also heard how Jodrell Bank is incredibly important as an inspiration; I remember being inspired by what was going on there as a child back in the 60s.

We can see that there are extraordinary opportunities. Businesses across the whole of the country are involved in the space sector. We are seeing extraordinary things going on in, for example, Northern Ireland, which has a very good aerospace legacy. Queen’s University Belfast is using that legacy in looking at the phased array antennas that are being designed and built to enable space-based solar power. That is an incredibly important and successful piece of work. When we eventually get to the stage in which space-based solar power stations are beaming energy back to Earth, Queen’s University Belfast will have been absolutely instrumental.

I have been heartened by the views of many Members. The clusters are very good, and Members will be pleased to hear that I know all the cluster chiefs, one way or another. In Cornwall, Gail Eastaugh is the pushiest of them all. She is truly dynamic and an absolute advocate for Cornwall. We had a drop-by space event a few months ago to promote the space cluster; people turned up with their little banners, but Gail brought something the size of the Chamber wall in order to promote Cornwall—it was very good.

The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth made a point about Newquay spaceport, which we must remember was a success. It was not the Newquay spaceport that got it wrong; a fuel filter in a Virgin rocket got it wrong. We must never forget that everything we wanted to do was a brilliant success.

I thank the Minister and the shadow Ministers, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire and the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, for their contributions. The sector is very exciting, and I get the sense that people are unified behind all this. We know there is a grand strategy and we want to be dominant in the sector. We might have disagreements or arguments over the tactics to achieve that, but if we share the common vision of a grand strategy, we can get there. It is incredibly important for our economy, our productivity and the future. As a mature economy we need to find ways to be increasingly productive in order to deliver a better quality of life for everybody, and space will absolutely deliver that.

The Minister spoke about the industrial strategy, and in a couple of weeks I will take a forensic look at that. The global space finance summit at the end of the year is so important. We have a lot of important sectors in the UK economy that we take for granted, and those sectors need space as much as space needs those sectors. If we want to continue to be relevant in the financial services sector, we have to be relevant for the most modern type of finance and the most modern types of opportunities. That is why we have to be good at space finance and think carefully about it. I would very much like an invitation to come along and speak at the summit.

I thank everybody who contributed to the debate. I get the sense that there is a strong unity of vision in the room, and this is a fantastic opportunity. As they say, to infinity and beyond!

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of the space industry on the economy.

Stourport Relief Road Fund

Debate between Mark Garnier and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to raise the issue of the Stourport relief road in this Adjournment debate. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be well aware that Worcestershire is an astonishingly beautiful county, and Wyre Forest in the north of the county is a perfect example of what Worcestershire has to offer. We have the forest and the hills, not one but two Georgian towns, and the River Severn, with its astonishing valley and heritage railway.

The River Severn, the longest river in the UK, is a fabulous source not just of natural beauty but of water to the 8 million customers of Severn Trent, and it also divides Worcestershire and my constituency in two halves. Inevitably, this leads to crossing pinch points, and along the stretch of the Severn that runs through Worcestershire there are surprisingly few crossing points. The city of Worcester enjoys a number, but, to the north of Worcester, there are just four points to cross east-west before getting into Shropshire; even then, the next crossing point is in Bridgnorth, 15 miles to the north of Bewdley. Of the four bridges on the 38-mile stretch between Worcester and Bridgnorth, three were built by the Victorians and are not fit for 21st-century traffic. Just one bridge was built in the 20th century, and that is the only bridge that can really take any heavy usage.

The most recent bridge, the Bewdley bypass, was built to support the east-west traffic and relieve Bewdley of heavy congestion through the town centre, which has, for a long time, been on a major route from the midlands to Wales. However, with the incredibly welcome flood defence works going on at the moment in Bewdley, the bridge has necessarily been closed to two-way traffic, increasing the burden on other local infrastructure, and the congestion has inevitably put pressure on other crossings.

Of course, the flood defences will be completed by this summer, and normal service will resume in Bewdley. However, the problems remind us why, four or five decades ago, proposals were put forward for a relief road for the town of Stourport-on-Severn, just to the south of Bewdley. As a parliamentary candidate back in 2004, I got hold of a set of 14 proposals for road improvements for Stourport, from minor town centre improvements to the full £14 million—at the time—bypass.

It is important to remember the problem these proposals were trying to solve. Stourport has a complicated town centre, with a one-way system that everybody accepts is far from ideal. It is trying hard—and, by the way, succeeding—to be a tourist destination town, attracting a lot of people from Birmingham. Yet because of its location and layout, many of the cars in the town centre are not there to be in Stourport, but in Stourport to be on their way to somewhere else. It is important to remember that this stretch of the River Severn in Wyre Forest has a denser population than the wider rural community, with 102,000 people living in the three towns of Stourport, Bewdley and Kidderminster. As I say, it is an incredibly important conurbation in Worcestershire.

Of the 14 proposals, the most ambitious for Stourport was the most popular at the time. It proposes taking a road from the busy Stourport to Kidderminster dual carriageway, running around the town to the south using existing roads that were at the time designed to take the Stourport relief road and old railway track that had been closed under the Beeching reforms, and then crossing the River Severn heading west and landing in the cricket club, before continuing its semi-circular route to join the A451 to Dunley. It then heads off to the western part of Worcestershire and then on to Wales, providing a major route to Wales.

That was a popular proposal and it was signalled for further investigation and development. Back in 2010, the cricket club was looking for Sport England’s support but was unable to secure it due to planning blight—the prospect that at any time it may find itself bisected by the new Stourport relief road—so the proposals were shelved. Although they never disappeared, they were not moved on.

Since then, the Stourport relief road has been talked about as a lost opportunity, a myth and a piece of cultural history that a few people remember. So what has changed? What has happened since then? Why is this now something that needs reviving? I mentioned earlier that the flood defence works have temporarily brought extra pressure on Wyre Forest’s river crossings, but that will be resolved in the summer. However, the local population is due to increase significantly. Wyre Forest district council recently published its local plan, under which nearly 5,000 new homes will be built across the district. Around 1,400 of those will be in Stourport and that will, inevitably, increase pressure on local infrastructure. That is an 11% increase in housing stock across the district, and a 13% increase in Stourport itself.

The problems are more profound. To the west of Stourport, directly adjacent to the Stourport suburb of Areley Kings, is an area of beauty known as the Snipes. It is right up against Stourport, but is in Malvern Hills district council’s area. Malvern Hills district council is a multi-party coalition and it has failed to come up with a local housing plan.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this issue forward. I spoke to him beforehand to get his thoughts on what he is asking for. He is asking for what I have asked for in my town of Ballynahinch in Strangford: a road to bypass small towns so they are not decimated by through-traffic. We have been waiting for that for almost two decades. Does he agree we need to ensure the Government understand that investment in such roads will bring regeneration to small towns and can very well be a rising tide that lifts all boats?

[Mark Garnier]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He hits the nail on the head. I will be addressing these points a little later in my speech, but if we want to generate economic growth we need to build the infrastructure first—the growth will follow.

Coming back to Stourport and what is going on in the Snipes and with Malvern Hill district councillors, a number of developers put in an application to build 500 to 1,000 houses. It was met with absolute disdain by Malvern Hills district council, Wyre Forest district council, local parish councils, town councillors, me and my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin). We all rejected it, but when it went to appeal, the Planning Inspectorate ruled that Malvern Hills district council had an unmet planning demand and accordingly granted planning permission against the wishes of literally everybody.

Through a quirk of geography, local government boundaries and poor management by politicians in Malvern Hills, Stourport will see hundreds if not thousands more homes relying on its town centre and facilities, but coming from outside the district. And it gets even worse. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government told us that in Wyre Forest, we are to build an extra 617 new homes ever year for the next five years, putting yet more burdens on the local infrastructure. That is just Wyre Forest; the total for the whole of Worcestershire is 5,300 homes a year. Add to that 1,375 homes for Herefordshire and 1,200 for Shropshire—that is every year—and one can see how the congestion on River Severn crossing pinch points will increase significantly. A lot of that will come through the point in Worcestershire where the three counties meet.

The argument for the Stourport relief road has never been stronger. It is time to revisit what is proposed. I do not profess to be a transport infrastructure expert, and I certainly do not fully understand traffic flows, but I can understand what it is like to be stuck in a traffic jam. The current 20-year-old proposals may still be perfect, but my instinct is that we need to look again at the whole issue of traffic across the Severn in Wyre Forest, and at how traffic flows across the river.

It may be that we need to look at how to join the Bewdley bypass with a road heading south, to the west of the new, unwelcome homes in the Snipes to the west of the river, that then crosses the Severn to the south of the cricket club, joining the Worcestershire A449; or it may be that the Bewdley bypass should continue when it lands on the eastern side of the bank, as was originally envisaged, between Kidderminster and Stourport, bypassing our main town to the south-east and joining the bypass with the A451 Kidderminster Road and the A449 Worcester Road, going on through the A448 Bromsgrove Road and up to the A456 Birmingham road—all of that adding to the existing Stourport relief road and effectively joining all the major roads that serve Wyre Forest. This would deliver a comprehensive and very long-term solution.

All this is for the experts, and for the community to unite behind. I have already spoken to Marc Bayliss, the Worcestershire county council cabinet member responsible for highways and transport. He agrees that this is an opportunity, and has indicated that it will be worked up and included in plans for the county. The county council is keen to progress our local infrastructure needs, but it needs clarity. It is keen to draw up local transport plan 5, but needs guidance from the Minister’s Department on what is expected of it. My ask is for that guidance to encourage local road schemes such as the one I am suggesting, a scheme that will bring not just a relief of traffic congestion but a boost to economic prosperity of the kind that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and—this is important—for the guidance for LTP 5 to come soon.

I also ask the Minister to give clarity on funding. Of course we need funding and plenty of it—and obviously the Minister receives many demands for that—but as part of the settlement, it would be good to understand the status of the proposed reallocation of HS2 money, which was suggested by the last Government to be £209 million over the coming seven years. Additionally, we await the announcement on road investment strategy 3, which will cover the Government’s plans for the strategic road network until 2030. I understand that it has been delayed to align with the spending review, but can the Minister tell me when RIS3 will be published, and whether a Stourport relief road could be considered as part of those plans—and will she come and open the new relief road? It would be great to see her there, and I mean not just to cut a ribbon but to drive a Morgan sports car up the new road. We are extremely proud of the fact that some Morgan cars are built just down the road in Malvern, and it would be a fantastic opportunity for her to demonstrate what this Government are doing to support my constituents in Worcestershire.

The new Government are making a very big deal of economic growth, which is incredibly important—I think we would all agree that economic growth is a driver of good for our society—and that is one of the reasons they are keen to build new homes. We can argue across the Chamber on details of how to achieve growth, but the one thing on which we will surely agree is that growth is generated by investment in infrastructure. If we are to build these new, economically productive new homes, we must serve their householders with easy ways to get to work, to school, to medical services when they are needed, and to the town centres to relax and shop and enjoy their communities. The Stourport relief road is one such infrastructure development, which will not just support the town of Stourport-on-Severn and my constituency, but deliver economic growth to the wider rural west midlands. I very much look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about my proposals.