Rogue Builders

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) on securing this important debate.

Over the last year, I have been campaigning on behalf of homeowners affected by faulty spray foam insulation installed under the previous Conservative Government’s green homes grant scheme. The aim was to improve the energy efficiency of homes across our country by offering households help to make their homes warmer, greener and cheaper to run. Many homeowners used the scheme to fund the installation of spray foam insulation. However, in a number of cases the installation was done incorrectly, causing moisture to become trapped, creating structural issues such as roof timber decay.

Under the green homes grant, as with other Government retrofit schemes, homeowners were told that only TrustMark-approved contractors could carry out the work, yet we have seen substandard and unqualified contractors admitted to the scheme, carrying out poor-quality work and then disappearing when problems emerge, leaving homeowners to deal with the consequences. These cases have exposed a growing problem: the rise of rogue builders and traders operating under the banner of Government assurance.

Although spray foam may seem niche, that case is not isolated. It is a symptom of a much deeper failure in oversight and consumer protection. The Government’s own quality assurance mechanism, TrustMark, as the hon. Member for Wyre Forest mentioned, is administered by the Department for Business and Trade, and it has failed in its most basic duty. TrustMark was established to ensure that only qualified and competent contractors were permitted to carry out work under Government-funded schemes, yet here we are with hundreds, if not thousands, of homeowners left with defective installations.

Recent announcements about improper installation under the Great British insulation and ECO4 schemes have further highlighted this failure. To put it simply, TrustMark is not fit for purpose. If the Government are to tackle the issue of rogue builders, they must start with those that they endorse under their own schemes. The Department for Business and Trade must work more closely with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to ensure that future schemes are properly monitored, contractors rigorously vetted, and consumers protected. That must include a thorough evaluation of TrustMark’s capacity to deliver the effective consumer protection that it ought to offer. At present, it is failing to provide meaningful quality assurance or to keep rogue builders out.

What is worse is that these failures have created a second wave of exploitation. Rogue traders are now targeting households that had any form of spray foam insulation and offering to remove it, at great cost, even where the insulation is properly installed and functional. In many cases, these removals, which are completely unnecessary, cause further damage to the property, leaving homeowners with even greater costs.

These vulnerable consumers have been exploited not once, but twice: first by unfit contractors operating under a Government-endorsed quality scheme, and then by opportunistic builders and traders exploiting the chaos that that failure has created. As my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) mentioned, often the companies are then wound up, leaving people without a mechanism or a person to seek redress through. This is precisely why stronger oversight is needed.

The Department must work with TrustMark to ensure that contractor vetting, auditing and enforcement are properly co-ordinated, leaving no room for unsuitable contractors to operate under the banner of Government assurance. Secondly, there must be clear and accessible routes to redress. Homeowners should not be left to navigate complex complaints systems or take costly legal action against builders who may already have vanished. While TrustMark offers a dispute resolution service, those who have tried it will know how difficult it is to access and how rarely it delivers meaningful outcomes.

I therefore urge the Minister to take up this issue seriously. TrustMark must be reviewed, consumer protections must be strengthened, and we must clamp down on rogue builders who exploit public funds and private households. Rogue builders are not just a nuisance; they are a serious threat to consumer confidence, public spending and the integrity of the housing sector. It is time we treated them as such.