Whether or not you have a written contract, you have statutory rights when commissioning building work as a consumer. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 replaced a patchwork of earlier legislation and brought domestic building services under a clearer framework. Understanding what it says, and how to use it, is genuinely useful when things go wrong.
Services Must Meet the Required Standard
Under the Act, services provided to consumers must be carried out with reasonable care and skill. This applies to all building trades: general contractors, electricians, plumbers, roofers, plasterers, and anyone else you pay to carry out work on your home.
What counts as "reasonable care and skill" is measured against the standard of a competent professional in that trade. It doesn't mean perfection, but it does mean the work should meet accepted industry standards. If a plasterer produces a finish that no competent plasterer would consider acceptable, that's a breach of the Act.
Pre-Contract Information Is Binding
This is a provision that catches many homeowners by surprise, in a positive way. Under the Act, any information a trader provides to you before you enter the contract becomes part of that contract if you rely on it in deciding to proceed. This includes verbal representations.
So if a builder tells you the work will take eight weeks and cost £25,000, and you engage them on that basis, those commitments carry contractual weight. If the work takes sixteen weeks and costs £35,000 due to factors that were foreseeable at the time of quoting, you may have a claim under the Act, even if the written contract doesn't mention these figures explicitly.
Practical implication: Keep records of everything a contractor tells you before you sign. Emails, texts and any written quotes that contain representations about timeline, cost or scope should all be retained. They may be legally significant.
The Right to Repeat Performance
If a service doesn't meet the required standard (reasonable care and skill), you have the right to require the trader to repeat the service at no extra charge. This is the primary remedy under the Act for substandard work. Before you're entitled to any reduction in price or refund, the trader generally gets one opportunity to put things right.
The repeat performance must be carried out within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to you. "Reasonable" isn't defined by the Act and will depend on the nature of the defect, but for domestic building work, weeks rather than months would normally be considered reasonable for non-urgent issues.
Price Reduction
If the trader can't or won't repeat the performance, or if repeat performance would be impossible, you're entitled to a price reduction. The reduction should reflect the reduced value of the service you actually received compared to the service you contracted for.
This is where it can become complicated: quantifying the difference in value between "the work promised" and "the work received" usually requires an independent assessment, often by a surveyor or building professional. In practice, it's common for disputes at this stage to be settled by negotiation rather than strict legal calculation.
When No Timescale Is Agreed
If the contract doesn't specify a completion date (which is common with more informal arrangements), the Act says the service must be completed within a reasonable time. This is a lower standard than a defined completion date, but it's not meaningless. A builder who hasn't appeared on site for three months with no agreed cause for delay is almost certainly in breach of this requirement.
When No Price Is Fixed
Similarly, if no price was agreed upfront, the Act says you're only obligated to pay a reasonable price for the work. You're not obligated to pay whatever the contractor invoices. If you receive an invoice that seems significantly higher than you'd expect for the work described, you're entitled to challenge it on this basis.
The challenge is that "reasonable price" is almost always contested. You'll need evidence of what market rates would be, which usually means getting quotes from other contractors for comparable work or commissioning a quantity surveyor to assess the fair value of what was done.
Goods Incorporated into Your Home
The Act also covers goods that a contractor supplies and fits as part of a service contract. These goods must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose, and as described. If a boiler is fitted and fails within six months, the starting point is that it was not of satisfactory quality at the time of supply, and the trader is responsible for repair or replacement.
There's an important nuance here: the Act's goods provisions apply to what the contractor supplied, not to products you supplied and they fitted. If you bought the boiler yourself and they installed it, the installation must be done with reasonable care and skill, but your claim for a defective boiler would be against the manufacturer or retailer, not the installer.
What the Act Doesn't Cover
The Consumer Rights Act applies where you're contracting as a consumer: an individual not acting in the course of a trade or business. If you're renovating a property as a business investment or landlord (even a small one), you may not have the same protections. The line can be blurry, and it's worth taking legal advice if this is relevant to your situation.
The Act also doesn't override a properly drafted contract. If your contract sets out specific remedies for specific situations, those terms will generally govern, provided they don't fall below the statutory minimum standards (which they can't lawfully do). A term that purports to exclude all liability for defects would be unenforceable, but a term that specifies the process for claiming for defects is generally fine.