Builder's Guide

Cashflow is the single biggest killer of businesses, big or small. To avoid cashflow difficulties a business needs a proper system for dealing with issues with customers and recovering debts. Once in place it then needs to follow that system. Our guides are designed to help you put that system in place.  We also offer a fixed fee business review and you should if you wish to receive further information.

Builders are in an ideal position.  They can retain ownership of materials until payment and generally know exactly where the client's property is.  If payment is not made they can look to reclaim the materials or have the property.

To help you we have put together free information to deal with disputes without the need to incur the costs of a lawyer unless and until the matter gets complicated or beyond your expertise. In the same way that you would not recommend that a lawyer re-plumb or re-wire your house, we do not recommend that you run all of your own litigation. However, in the early stage of pursuing a customer for non-payment the issues will often relate more to building matters than legal points.

The guide is designed for the smaller and more general disputes. We strongly recommend that as soon as you feel you may be getting out of your depth you should instruct us to take the case over. You should also consider whether your time is best spent doing your work and leaving the pursuit of debts to a solicitor anyway.

The only guaranteed way to resolve a dispute is to go to Court and have a trial. Unless the case is likely to settle, the longer you take to go to Court the longer it will be before the matter is resolved and any money due is paid. In the meantime the other party may move their assets to prevent you ever recovering your money. However, going to Court can be both complicated and a potential public relations disaster. There are standards of conduct that are expected of both sides and if you are having problems with a customer there is no reason why you should not refer them to our so that they understand what they should be doing as well. As long as both sides follow the principles set out on this website they should find that their conduct is unlikely to be criticised, matters are more likely to settle and if they need to go to Court it will be a less painful process.

The builders section of the website is arranged as follows: