NHIC launches second Covid
impact survey
28th April 2020

The National Home Improvement Council has launched its second nationwide industry survey into the impact of Covid-19 on households.

The news follows the first survey which revealed that two thirds of home improvement professionals had received abuse from the public for staying open, and half the industry saw a growing risk of rogue traders rogue traders neglecting Public Health England social distancing advice and targeting vulnerable householders read story.

Chief Executive Anna Scothern said: “Current PHE and Government safe working guidance for construction makes no differentiation between occupied and unoccupied buildings or sites and states that work can continue, but that safe working guidance and social distancing rules must be followed. This can be extremely challenging for professionals in the home improvement and RMI sector who primarily work in customer homes while householders are in residence and as a result many of our member companies have made the decision that work cannot continue safely and have closed their doors for the duration of the lockdown.

“This leaves the door open for rogue traders to target households with the promise of works completed; often for cash, with no warranty or insurance backed guarantee and not delivered by a member of a competent person scheme and we believe this puts householders at significant risk of consumer detriment.

She concluded: “This our second in a series of surveys will help understand the scale of the problem so we can work across our membership with government and partners to provide an evidence base with which to develop cross industry and consumer protection solutions.”

The consumer detriment survey can be found at https://nhic.org.uk/home-improvement-covid-19-consumer-detriment-survey/ and will be live until 30th April 2020

The full COVID19 impact survey findings can be viewed at https://nhic.org.uk/covid19impactsurvey