UK Construction and Law

Money for home building work is to be held and released against milestones, under a scheme going live from September

By Staff Writer  |  28 August 2026

The government has announced an approved code for home improvement traders and a payment arrangement that holds a customer's money and releases it as the work is done. Separately, private bailiffs in England and Wales will have to be accredited before they can obtain or renew the certificate they need to work.

The announcement, published this morning by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, does two separate things that happen to have been put in the same document. The first is aimed at the domestic building market. From September, traders will be able to sign up to an Approved Code, which is intended to let a householder tell in advance which firms have committed to stated standards of service, transparency and dispute resolution. Alongside it comes a payment arrangement under which the customer's money is held and released against project milestones rather than handed over in a lump at the start.

That second element is the one worth reading twice. Staged release against completed work is ordinary practice in commercial construction, where interim payment, valuation and the statutory payment rules have governed the position for thirty years. The domestic market has had none of it. A householder engaging a builder directly has generally paid up front, in stages agreed on nothing, or on the builder's say-so that the next tranche is due.

What the figures say about the problem

The department puts the scale of it in three numbers. More than one in four adults who had home improvement work carried out in the past 18 months ran into problems. More than a third of those, 37 per cent, faced extra costs, losing an average of 750 pounds. And across 2024, households lost over 10.3 billion pounds on home and garden maintenance through losses, overpricing or unfair practices.

The department describes the problems in the terms practitioners will recognise from adjudication files at a much larger scale: jobs abandoned part way through, elderly customers pressed to overpay for poor work, and money taken up front against work that was never done.

These changes mean you'll now have the option to make sure your money is held safely and released bit by bit as the work gets done.

Andy Burnham, Prime Minister

The timetable is short. The payments application goes live next week, with over 100,000 traders able to access it before the end of September. The Approved Code will be live with its first retailers by the end of September and fully live by December 2026.

The bailiff half of the announcement

The second measure is unrelated to building work but will matter to anyone who deals with enforcement against domestic debtors. Independent oversight is to be made mandatory for private bailiffs in England and Wales. A bailiff will have to be accredited by the Enforcement Conduct Board, or work for an enforcement firm that is, in order to obtain or renew the certificate without which they cannot work. Those facing enforcement will have access to an independent complaints process.

All private bailiffs will have to meet proper, professional standards and will be subject to independent oversight - giving people greater protection and somewhere to turn when things go wrong.

Sarah Sackman, Minister for Courts and Legal Services

Ministers also confirmed longer term plans to look again at the wider consumer protection landscape, and specifically at how advice bodies, trading standards, regulators, enforcement bodies and redress schemes work with one another. No date was given for that part.

What is actually new here

Neither measure is legislation, and neither is compulsory for the trader. A builder who does not want to be in the Approved Code does not have to be, and a customer who does not use the payment arrangement is where they were yesterday. What changes is the availability of a mechanism that the domestic market has never had as an off the shelf option, and the fact that a reputable firm can now point to something a customer can check.

For contractors who work both sides of the line, the useful point is the direction of travel. Payment against milestones, held money, an approved standard and a route to redress are the ordinary furniture of a commercial building contract. They are now being offered to the householder who books a rear extension, and the firms that already work that way have the least to change.