By Jon Vanstone, chair Certass TA.

There is a pattern most experienced businesses recognise, even if they have never articulated it. When order books are full and work is flowing, regulation feels manageable.

It is still there, still demanding, but it does not dominate decision-making. When the market slows, that same regulation suddenly feels heavier, more intrusive and more expensive.

The rules have not changed. What has changed is the context in which businesses are operating.

In a quieter market, every decision carries more weight. Cash flow tightens, margins narrow and uncertainty increases. Costs that were once absorbed without much thought become highly visible.

Regulation is one of the few costs that cannot be switched off or deferred, and that alone makes it feel more burdensome when pressure builds elsewhere.

This reaction is not a failure of attitude or professionalism, it is a natural response to loss of control. When businesses feel squeezed, anything fixed and unavoidable attracts scrutiny. Compliance sits firmly in that category.

In busier periods, volume disguises friction. Inefficient processes, awkward systems and administrative duplication are tolerated because the work keeps coming. When demand slows, those same frictions become impossible to ignore. The regulatory requirements have not increased, but tolerance for how they are delivered drops sharply.

Price pressure is usually the first visible consequence. As competition intensifies, some businesses feel pushed towards stripping costs out of jobs wherever they can. That can include specification, documentation or certification. It often feels like a necessary survival tactic in the moment, particularly when customers are more price sensitive and less decisive.

The problem is that this rarely delivers the relief it promises. Cutting corners tends to create new problems rather than removing old ones. Disputes take longer to resolve, confidence drops, and the mental load of constantly negotiating where the line sits increases. Margin erosion accelerates rather than slows.

Clear standards exist precisely to prevent that spiral. They remove ambiguity about what compliant work actually involves and what it genuinely costs to deliver. Businesses that understand their standards well are better equipped to hold the line on price, because they are not negotiating from uncertainty. In difficult markets, clarity becomes a commercial asset.

There is also a human dimension to regulation that becomes far more important when pressure rises. When work is plentiful, most systems feel tolerable. When margins are under strain, the experience around compliance starts to matter as much as the requirement itself. Communication, responsiveness and support are no longer ‘nice to have’, they directly affect how efficiently a business can operate.

Installers do not stop accepting responsibility in a quiet market. What they become less willing to accept is unnecessary friction, poor communication or processes that feel disconnected from commercial reality. If compliance is a cost that must be carried regardless of workload, then how that cost is experienced becomes part of the business calculation.

This is not about avoiding standards. It is about recognising that respect, clarity and proportionality reduce stress and wasted effort at exactly the point businesses can least afford it. Good regulatory support makes compliance feel lighter, even when the obligation itself remains unchanged.

Reputation also behaves differently in slower markets. Consumers take longer to decide, scrutinise credentials more closely and have less tolerance for mistakes. Trust becomes harder to earn and easier to lose. Proper compliance provides reassurance at the moment homeowners feel most cautious and protects installers from disputes that can be financially damaging when cash flow is already under pressure.

Quiet markets have a way of exposing weaknesses and sometimes that is uncomfortable, but it is not new. The industry has been through cycles before and the businesses that come through strongest are rarely those that tried to shortcut standards. They are the ones that understood what those standards were actually protecting.

Regulation is not designed to punish competent businesses when work is scarce. Its purpose is to create consistency, protect consumers and provide a stable framework within which good operators can trade with confidence. When the market is quiet, that framework often matters more, not less.

Compliance may feel heavier in difficult conditions, but very often it is doing exactly what it was intended to do: protecting long-term margin, reputation and sustainability at the point they are most at risk.

Certass believes in making life as simple as possible for its members whilst maintaining the standards required by law and expected by homeowners. This is why we have the highest Trustpilot rating in our area of the market.