Cowboy builders are exploiting homeowners with a series of rip-off scams that can cost people thousands of pounds, according to a builder who says matters have become much worse since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Graham Nash, 51, has run his building firm for decades, and he claims to have helped more than 350 people who have been scammed by cowboy traders. The director of Pinnacle Builders, based in Morley, Leeds, told Express.co.uk that he has noticed a rise since Covid-19 of trades people siphoning money from homeowners by delaying jobs and getting money up front, often without written contracts. Some people Mr Nash has talked to have lost thousands of pounds as a result.
There was a 31 per cent rise in complaints about cowboy builders to the Citizens Advice Bureau between 2020 and 2021. Mr Nash, who has been director of the company for 35 years since creating it as a teenager, said: "Builders are starting to take advantage of these extra bits of work which they add as they go along because a contract wasn't created. They are creaming it in and that is not right. It has been particularly bad since Covid."
