Partner Article

Rogue tradesmen may be thing of the past thanks to new site

A NEW WEBSITE that is dedicated to providing consumers with a one-stop-shop for finding reputable tradesmen expects to increase turnover by 50% having marketed its services to 100,000 homes across the region.

Ben Dures and Alistair Sutherland of North Shields based Synthesis-IT Ltd, have set up reliabletradespeople.co.uk, after identifying a gap in the online market.

Research recently undertaken by the Government backed TrustMark revealed that Newcastle comes top of the shame league for rogue tradesmen.

The shock findings reveal that 54% of North East customers have been left picking up the pieces, literally, because of shoddy workmanship.

A staggering 86% of respondents from Newcastle stated that they had been let down by a tradesman who arrived late and 57% reported that a tradesman booked to do a job failed to make an appearance at all.

New markets beyond the North Tyneside pilot are already in production and the company plans to expand throughout the entire UK and abroad.

Ben Dures said: “I met up with Alistair at Christmas last year, we’ve known each other for years, and we started talking about dodgy builders and sloppy workmanship and came up with the idea for Reliable Tradespeople On-line.

“What is so distinctive about www.reliabletradespeople.co.uk is that it sets such high standards for contractors and service providers who wish to register with us. This is important to me because I’m very interested in ethical trading, the use of local labour and protecting the public.”

Reliable Tradespeople On-line employs a strict vetting system and alerts reputable tradesmen and contracts who work in specific fields and a particular geographical area.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .