New guide explains how to avoid cowboys

A new guidebook will help landlords looking to develop their property by providing strict guidelines on how to avoid rogue builders.

With the renovation market as active as ever, many landlords are making expensive changes to their pubs. The Develop Your Property guide by Which? should help those worried about employing cowboy builders.

The guide includes a list of questions that licensees should ask potential contractors, and suggests that if a builder refuses to answer any of them, they should not be employed. These include:

• What qualifications have you got?
• Are you a member of an organisation - if so, which one?
• Can you provide a detailed quote for the work in writing, breaking down labour and material costs?
• Can you supply three references of recent work and can I visit them with you?

If these questions can be answered properly, landlords should organise estimates, quotes and contracts. According to the guide this is the area in which most jobs go wrong, because of badly defined agreements about who does what, for when, and for how much.

Kate Faulkner, the guide's author says: "Cowboys have been known to take the money and run before they've finished a job, or produce such poor quality work that it costs a fortune to get fixed. So it's worth taking the time to make sure you get one of the good guys.

"Disreputable builders can fool the smartest of people. Often they are charming, enthusiastic and appear to be credible. The real conmen will also claim to be members of organisations, assuming this will not be checked, and some even produce fake ID."