A rogues’ gallery

Glass Times editor Nathan Bushell wants to identify the cowboys.

Research this week from the Federation of Master Builders uncovers a national fear of cowboy builders, and a stash of £10 billion unspent cash.

I suppose this is in the same way that my son’s fear of flying means we contribute to an unspent pile of cash that the airlines don’t receive, but I understand where they are coming from.

It would be more interesting if the new research was more specific about which sectors of the home improvement sector homeowners were particularly fearful of, primarily because the glazing industry likes to think it has largely shaken off that awful ‘double glazing’ tag that became synonymous with predators, and I’d like to see where double-glazing salesmen come in a rogues’ gallery of tradesmen.

In any case, ‘builders’ seems too generic, and I can’t work out if it is laziness on behalf of the researchers or ignorance on behalf of the participants (in which case the researchers should have been more specific) that there wasn’t more detail about industry sectors. I don’t think anyone benefits from the catch-all term ‘builder’ and the implied preconceptions that come with it.

It also undervalues the work that specialist tradesmen contribute to ‘major home improvement works’ if you call everyone a builder.
We have already discussed how the construction industry as a whole is suffering from a bad reputation, and if we are to attract the bright, energetic and ambitious youth, then we need to be clear about the variety of roles and skills that are needed, and that starts by identifying the rogues…