The standard
There’s no maintained accreditation standard in UK building.
We’re building one.
Eight independent checks. Annual re-verification. Public audit trail per builder. And the only economic model in this category that actually funds the standards work.
01
Why this is hard
Industry trust is broken in a specific, repeatable way. Two failure modes show up in every accreditation attempt that has collapsed before us.
Subscription-only revenue
Whoever pays the monthly fee stays listed. Removal of a bad builder means lost monthly revenue. The platform has zero financial incentive to enforce standards after onboarding. Over time, “verified” becomes a marketing badge.
No teeth on lapse
Lapsed insurance, complaints upheld, references that don’t check out — most platforms send a reminder. There is no immediate operational consequence to slipping. Result: standards decay quietly between annual checks.
Both modes have the same root cause: the model rewards keeping builders on the platform, not keeping the standard up. We rewired the model.
02
Our standard
Eight independent checks. Two tiers. Stored in the database as an enum, not a marketing list — a builder cannot earn a CB-XXXXX number without the tier-appropriate checks passing.
- 01
Companies House
BothActive company · no recent dissolution · no director disqualification.
Re-checked · Annually + on every status change
- 02
Public liability insurance
BothMinimum £2m cover. Certificate verified directly with the insurer.
Re-checked · On expiry · grace window 14 days
- 03
Trade-body membership
Standard+FMB / NHBC / TrustMark / Gas Safe / NICEIC / FENSA cross-checked against the body's published list.
Re-checked · Quarterly
- 04
VAT registration
BothHMRC VAT lookup. Below-threshold builders declare exemption.
Re-checked · Annually
- 05
Photo-verified portfolio
Standard+Minimum five completed projects with photos. Site visit for new applicants.
Re-checked · Annually with new evidence
- 06
Two written references
Standard+Prior customers called by our team using a structured checklist (verbal consent + six outcome questions).
Re-checked · Re-collected annually
- 07
DBS check on the principal
PremiumFor work in occupied homes. Result recorded against the verification record, never published.
Re-checked · Five-yearly + on principal change
- 08
Annual re-verification
BothEvery check repeats every year. 30 / 7 / 0-day reminders. Public page flips red on lapse.
Re-checked · Always
Six checks · one-off £199
Companies House + insurance + annual re-verification + either trade-body membership or (references + portfolio). Mints a public CB-XXXXX number.
All eight · one-off £499
Adds DBS check on the principal + on-site visit by our verification team. Recommended for work in occupied homes and higher-value jobs.
Companies House
Both tiersLive API lookup · checked at approval + on every annual cycle
Public liability insurance
Both tiersConfirmed directly with the insurer by phone · expiry tracked
VAT registration
Both tiersHMRC VAT lookup
Trade-body membership
Standard+Cross-check against the body's published register (FMB / TrustMark / Gas Safe / NICEIC / FENSA)
Photo-verified portfolio
Standard+Five-project minimum · on-site visit by our verification team for new applicants
Two written references
Standard+Phone interview with a structured checklist (verbal consent + six outcome questions)
DBS check on the principal
Premium onlyBasic Disclosure & Barring Service check via a certificated provider
On-site visit
Premium onlyOur verification team visits the builder's place of work or a recent project
03
How we maintain it
Accreditation is only as strong as what happens after the badge is issued. Four mechanisms keep ours honest, written into the code rather than the marketing.
Annual re-verification, scheduled
Every approved builder has a re-verification date set one year forward. Reminders fire at 30, 7 and 0 days. The public verification page flips red when the date passes. Not a discretionary review — a scheduled re-collection of every piece of evidence.
Document expiry monitored
Insurance certificates, trade-body memberships, DBS evidence — every document with an expiry date is tracked against a 35-day lookahead window. The verification team gets a single queue with urgency buckets (red <7 days, amber 8–30, neutral 31+). Nothing decays unseen.
Suspension is a hard-gate
When a builder is suspended, the matching engine excludes them from every future auction immediately — one line of code, no soft flag, no waiting for the next cycle. Their public verification page also shows the suspended state with the reason and date.
Every change is publicly audited
Every status change, every reference-call outcome, every Companies House re-sync writes to an append-only audit log. A filtered, privacy-safe subset is visible on every public verification page. Anyone — a homeowner, a journalist, a competitor — can audit the trail.
04
The model funds the standard
The reason other accreditation startups fail isn't motivation. It's economics. Subscription-only revenue makes standards work a cost centre. We made it a revenue driver.
Builder revenue 01
£29 /mo
Flat monthly subscription once verified. Covers platform access, CRM, billing and pipeline tools.
Builder revenue 02
Win -only bids
Sealed-bid auction per real homeowner project. Builder pays only when they win the right to contact the homeowner. Losers pay nothing.
Revenue mix
65%
Of forward revenue comes from won bids, not listings. The bigger the share of revenue tied to genuine work, the more it costs us to keep a bad builder in the pool.
Why this matters
A bad builder consumes verification team hours and reference calls. They lose auctions to better builders, so they generate no winning-bid revenue. Net: every bad builder in the pool is a cost. We have a structural reason — not just an aspirational one — to remove them. That’s the difference between an accreditation that decays and one that compounds.
Section 05 · Audit
Audit any builder yourself
Every accredited builder has a public CB-XXXXX number that resolves to a verification page showing every check, every status change, and every re-verification date. Indexable by search engines. No marketing fluff.
What lives on every verify page
- Status banner — Active, Suspended, or Not recognised.
- Tier badge — Verified Premium or Standard.
- Identity — registered + trading name, Companies House number.
- Eight-stage accreditation grid with verified-on dates.
- Insurance provider, cover amount, expiry.
- Trade-body memberships and trades covered.
- Verification history — every status change, time-stamped.
- Re-verification due date, with countdown banner if approaching.
06
For homeowners
The standard exists so you can do less of the trust work. Three things change for you.
No flood of cold calls
You submit your project once. We send it to up to five shortlisted Verified Premium builders. One wins; one contacts you. The other four never see your details.
The builder pays — not you
Builders pay us to win the right to bid on your project. You pay nothing. Pricing transparency cuts both ways: you also see no inflated quotes built to cover lead costs the builder bought from somewhere else.
Audit before you reply
Every builder you’re matched with has a public verification page. Eight checks, status, audit trail, re-verification date. Type their CB number into the lookup above to see for yourself.
07
For builders
Good tradespeople hate bad ones — the bad ones ruin everyone's reputation. The standard exists to protect good builders from being undercut by cowboys.
Free to apply
No charge to start the accreditation process. £29/month once verified, plus your winning bids. No charge for losing bids, no charge for cold leads that go nowhere.
Pre-qualified jobs
Every job in the auction pool has passed our scoring: real homeowner, real budget bracket, real project readiness, SMS- verified contact. Low-intent leads route to nurture, not the auction.
The standard protects you
You won’t bid against an uninsured cowboy who under-cuts because they cut corners. Every other builder in the auction has cleared the same eight checks you did. The standard is the floor.
Now you’ve read the standard
Start a project,
audit a builder.
Two ways to use the standard right now — submit your project or look up any verified builder by their CB number.