Building fraud is bigger than just a cowboy builder doing a bad job. We’re talking about people who lie on purpose: fake qualifications, made-up accreditations, bills for work that was never done or materials that were never used, and in the worst cases, a deliberate plan to target vulnerable homeowners and take as much of their money as possible. Whether you’re dealing with someone who’s just careless or someone who’s actually committing fraud changes what you can do about it legally, and how we’d go about investigating it.
Types of Building Fraud
Fake qualifications and accreditations: if a contractor tells you they’re Gas Safe registered, NICEIC approved, or a member of the FMB and they’re not, that’s a lie that breaks the law. It’s a civil wrong, and it can also be a criminal offence under the Fraud Act 2006.
Billing for work or materials you never got: if a contractor charges you for work they didn’t finish, or for materials that were never actually used, or used something cheaper than what you paid for, that’s fraud.
Lying about how bad the problem is: some tradespeople will tell you your roof is about to fall in when it isn’t, or that your damp is a structural issue when it’s really nothing serious, just to justify charging you for work you don’t need. That’s a deceptive practice, and it can amount to fraud.
Taking a deposit and never doing the work: if someone takes a big deposit from you with no plan to actually do the job, that’s fraud under the Fraud Act 2006. It’s different from a contractor who takes a deposit, runs into genuine problems, and doesn’t finish — though you may still have a civil claim against them too.
The Fraud Act 2006
The Fraud Act 2006 makes it a crime to lie to someone on purpose in order to gain money or cause them a loss. So if a contractor lies about their qualifications, claims work needs doing when it doesn’t, lies about the materials they used, or lies about finishing the job — all to get paid — they could be breaking the law, not just letting you down.
This matters because it changes where you can take your case. A civil dispute goes through small claims or the county court. But if you think a crime has been committed, you should also report it to Action Fraud, and if it looks like this contractor has done this to other people too, to trading standards as well.
What We Look Into
When ARF investigates building fraud, we’re trying to pin down the facts that back up both a civil claim and a criminal report:
- Who the contractor actually is — their background, their trading history, any other businesses they’ve run, and any past complaints against them
- Whether the qualifications or memberships they claimed are real
- Whether other customers have made similar complaints about them
- Paper evidence of what you agreed to, what you paid, and what you actually got
- Photos and a professional record of the state of the work
We put all of this together in a report you can use in court, in a trading standards complaint, or in a complaint to whichever accreditation body they claimed to belong to.
Think you’ve been a victim of building fraud? Get in touch with ARF Private Investigators for a confidential chat about what we can do.