For me, anything that gives consumers better protection when they are spending thousands of pounds on their home has to be a good thing.

There’s a lot within the Government’s new Approved Code for home improvement businesses and in the Trusted Payments system that makes sense. Better standards, clearer contracts, staged payments and proper dispute resolution are all very positive. The concept itself isn’t new to KBB, as it sounds a lot like a previous platform called Protect My Install, which was closely connected with the BiKBBI. A platform which I signed up for at the time.

But I do have a problem with the way this whole thing is being sold. The Government’s official press release repeatedly talks about “cowboy builders” and “rogue operators”. Andy Burnham even said the measures would “put cowboy builders out of business”.

I don’t believe they will.

These schemes are voluntary. Professional businesses that already carry the correct public liability insurance, collect reviews, and work to proper standards are exactly the businesses that are most likely to join. The true “rogue trader” simply won’t join.

I’m not saying voluntary schemes are pointless. Far from it. They can help consumers identify good businesses and give professional tradespeople another way to demonstrate how they work. But saying they will put cowboy builders out of business, the Government needs to be realistic with its language about what they can and are likely to achieve.

All this at the precise time when we are trying to attract young people into the skilled trades and encourage parents to see trades as a strong career choice for their teenage school leavers, why, oh why, do we then turn the focus to promoting the industry through its worst operators?

We need the conversation to be far more about what good looks like and ways to recognise a great business.

A professional trades business will never be defined by a single badge. Things like insurance, written quotations, reviews, track record, communication, and trade memberships all go a long way to building a picture of a trusted professional business. Accreditation can be part of that picture, but accreditation doesn’t mean things will never go wrong.

Citizens Advice research behind the Government announcement found that 28% of people who had hired a tradesperson for home repairs or improvements experienced an issue. That’s not a great statistic. But an issue on a project is not automatic evidence of a rogue trader. A problem on a project also doesn’t make somebody a cowboy, and a disagreement is not necessarily bad workmanship.

Anyone who works within kitchen and bathroom installation knows things go wrong all the time. Products arrive damaged, parts can be missing, and installers do actually make mistakes. The real test of a professional business is not whether a problem will happen. It’s how that problem is dealt with.

The payment protection side of things was probably my biggest concern, but after looking more closely at the Trusted Payments website and how the system is intended to work, it does look like a lot of thought and consideration has gone into protecting both sides. The scope, price and milestones are all agreed, changes are recorded, payments are linked to stages, and there’s access to independent dispute resolution. So if either party disagrees about whether a stage is complete or not, there are protections in place.

That is important, because I have been here before and have the t-shirt.

I remember a large project we had; my company had £15,000 outstanding as a final payment. The customer refused to release that payment because when his high-speed integrated washing machine in a large island went into its full spin cycle, some china in an adjacent cabinet faintly rattled.

£15,000 was being withheld over a rattling china teacup.

The electricians, plumbers and other subcontractors all still had to be paid. They had carried out work for my company, so it was my responsibility to pay them regardless of whether the customer paid me.

Most KBB installation businesses are small one-man businesses. If several thousand pounds are held back for weeks while somebody decides whether a minor snag justifies non-payment, the customer may be protected, but the financial risk is now with the installer. The installer is often the person standing in the customer’s home when the problem appears, so the installer becomes the easiest person to blame for everything.

This is exactly where a system like Trusted Payments could have really helped me.

I’ve lost count of the number of times customers have withheld money because a replacement door was outstanding, even though the damaged door was a product issue and had nothing to do with the installation.

Any payment protection scheme therefore has to distinguish between product value, installation value and additional works. It also needs a sensible way of deciding how much money can reasonably be withheld against the value of the actual issue.

Protecting a £100 snag by freezing several thousand pounds would never feel like balanced consumer protection. Customers have responsibilities too, and any fair system has to protect both sides.

From what I understand, Trusted Payments has tried to build safeguards around exactly this sort of problem, which is encouraging. The real test will be how it works when these situations happen in the real world.

The KBB industry will have its own part to play. If a retailer sells and owns the installation contract, then it owns the responsibility that goes with it. Whether installers are employed or subcontracted should make little difference. A retailer cannot take ownership of the sale and then distance itself from installation when something becomes difficult. The same applies across the supply chain. An installer should not be carrying the financial cost of a manufacturer’s damaged product simply because they happen to be the last person in the room and the only person with money still due from the customer. But I can assure you that happens to installers every day, up and down the country.

I am all for raising standards, but what we don’t need is simply another badge or another layer of cost that makes good businesses prove again that they are good businesses.

Trusted Payments might actually become a useful tool for good tradespeople. Something that gives customers peace of mind, while also helping professional businesses show that they are doing things properly.

There’s an opportunity here that is far bigger than corralling cowboys. This moment should be used to show consumers what professional looks like, raise the profile of businesses doing things properly and make good standards commercially valuable to the people investing the time and money to achieve them. There will always be customers who choose purely on price, and there will always be somebody prepared to offer that lower price and the risks that come with it. No voluntary accreditation scheme will ever remove that reality.

So yes, protect consumers and have better minimum standards. Give the customer somewhere meaningful to turn when something genuinely goes wrong. But make sure to protect the good tradespeople and installation businesses we already have.

I don’t think you can raise the profile of the skilled trades by continually referring to them through the language of cowboys and rogue traders.

If we want a stronger construction and KBB installation industry, the conversation needs to move beyond these negative terms and spend much more time and effort helping consumers understand what good and professional look like.