ROGUE TRADERS: Crackdown targets the gutter-clean con that fleeced valley pensioners

It starts with a cheap gutter clean. It ends with a ruined roof, invented repairs and an empty savings account.

Westminster says it is now coming for the cowboy builders behind it, with new protections it claims will stop householders being fleeced on home improvements.

Courts here did not need telling the con exists. In July, Neath roofer Richard Murnane was jailed for 32 months after turning gutter cleans into around £40,000 of fraudulent roofing work across Neath Port Talbot, with a judge calling him “a classic example of a rogue builder”.

Eight months earlier, two men who quoted an Ystalyfera couple £1,000 for a roof clean were jailed after taking them for £33,200, even urging the pensioners to remortgage their bungalow. “The phrase rogue traders doesn’t even begin to describe what you are,” the judge told them.

And last autumn Carmarthenshire Council warned of a spate of roofing and landscaping cold callers working doors across the county.

The UK Government says the pattern is national: more than one in four UK adults who had home improvement work done in the past 18 months hit problems, over a third of those lost money, £750 on average, and it puts losses on home and garden work at more than £10.3bn in 2024 alone.

Your money released only as the work gets done

Two changes are promised from September, the government says. A new Approved Code scheme will let traders who sign up show they meet higher standards on customer service, transparency and settling disputes.

And a payment protection system will hold customers’ money and release it in stages, tied to project milestones, rather than handing a builder everything up front.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the changes meant people would “have the option to make sure your money is held safely and released bit by bit as the work gets done”.

“We’ve taken on subscription traps, fake discounts, and now we’re coming for the cowboy builders. Enough is enough,” he said.

The government says the Trusted Payments app goes live next week, with more than 100,000 traders able to access it by the end of September, and the Approved Code fully live by December.

The same package puts bailiffs in England and Wales under mandatory independent oversight for the first time.

Ministers also confirmed a longer-term review of how Trading Standards, Citizens Advice and regulators work together, aiming, the government says, to stop people being “passed from pillar to post”. Locally that means teams like Neath Port Talbot Council’s Trading Standards officers, whose investigation put Murnane behind bars.

Until the new schemes arrive, the advice from councils here stands: take your time before agreeing to work, be wary of pressure on the doorstep, and report suspicious traders to Trading Standards.

Carmarthenshire residents can check vetted firms through the council’s Buy With Confidence scheme.