Guide

How to Find a Tradesperson You Can Trust

24 September 2026 · 6 min read

Everybody says "get a recommendation". Nobody says whose recommendation is worth having, or what to do when you do not have one.

What a recommendation is actually worth

Not all of them are the same thing, and the difference matters more than the number of them.

• Somebody who had the same work done, near you, recently. The best evidence there is. They know what it cost, how long it took and what the person was like to have in the house.
• Somebody who had different work done. Still useful. It tells you they turn up and behave well, which is most of the battle.
• A five-star review from a stranger. Nearly worthless on its own. You do not know who wrote it, whether the job was anything like yours, or whether it was written by the trader.

A neighbour who would have them back is worth more than fifty stars from people you cannot ask a follow-up question.

Where to look, in order

1. Your own street. Ask the neighbours. The same houses, the same age of pipework, the same problems — and somebody local who did a bad job cannot hide from the people who live around it.
2. Your street's WhatsApp group, if there is one. This is where most recommendations in Britain actually happen.
3. Trade bodies, for the work that is regulated: Gas Safe for gas, NICEIC or NAPIT for electrical work, and so on. These prove qualifications, not manners.
4. Directories and ad-funded lists, last. Somebody paid to be at the top of them, and that is not the same as being good.

The five questions

Ask these before the work starts, of anyone, however they were recommended. Each one is short, and the answers tell you nearly everything.

• "Can I see the quote in writing?" Price, what is included, what is not. Not a number over the phone.
• "What happens if you find something behind the wall?" You are asking how they handle surprises. A good answer is "I stop, show you, and price it before I go on".
• "Are you insured?" Public liability at least. Any real trade will say yes without flinching.
• "Who actually does the work?" Them, a lad, a subcontractor. No wrong answer — but you want to know before the day.
• "Can I speak to someone you did this for?" A confident tradesperson will give you a name. It is also the question that most reliably ends a conversation with the wrong one.

The signs worth walking away from

• Cash only, and a discount for it. It usually means no record, and no record means nothing to fall back on when the work fails.
• A large payment up front. A deposit for materials is normal. Half the job before anyone has arrived is not.
• Pressure to decide today. The offer that expires this afternoon is a sales tactic, not a price.
• They knocked on your door about work you had not thought about, especially roofing or driveways.
• No written quote, no address, no VAT number when the price implies one.

Getting three quotes, properly

Three is the right number: one tells you nothing, five wastes everybody's time including yours.

Show each of them the same job, described the same way, and ask for the same thing in writing. Otherwise you are not comparing prices, you are comparing guesses about different jobs.

When they come back, the middle one is not automatically right and the cheapest is not automatically wrong. Read what each one includes. The gap between the highest and the lowest is usually work that one of them has left out.

After the job

Two minutes, and it is the part everyone skips.

• Keep the invoice, the certificate and the guarantee together. You will want them when you sell the house, if not before.
• Save the number under what they do, not just their name — "Joe plumber" finds itself in two years, "Joe" does not.
• Tell your street. The person you recommend today is the person your neighbour is not left hunting for in a panic on a Sunday.

What Rep does with this

Rep is built around the first item on that list of places to look: your own street. Households recommend tradespeople they would use again, and those recommendations are grouped by the street they came from, so what you see first is the people your own neighbours would have back.

There is no paid position, no promoted slot and no way to buy your way up the list. How Rep works for households sets out exactly what your neighbours see and what they do not.