Will the government’s new construction escrow scheme actually work? No.
No. Hell no. A scheme that puts the government, or a company the government is promoting, between a bathroom firm and the client is overreach. It is a private contract. They have no right to be in it.
What they have actually announced
In 2026 the government threw its weight behind a home-improvement payment app and an “approved code”, sold as the way to avoid cowboy builders. The client pays in. The money is held. It is released when stages are ticked off. It is being described as escrow. It is not a tax we already pay, and it is not, today, a law that forces every fitter in Burnley onto a portal. It is being built so that “trusted” comes to mean “signed up”. That is the part we are refusing.
The questions they skip
- —While the money sits there, who earns the interest — the client, the contractor, or the operator of the scheme? If the government or the platform keeps it, that is a charge with a polite name.
- —Is there a fee to use the service? There always is. It will not be absorbed out of kindness. It will land on the client’s bill, or it will be cut out of the firm doing the work. Either way the bathroom costs more so a middleman can exist.
- —Who decides a stage is finished — the person whose bathroom it is, or a process that can freeze a small firm’s cash while a photograph is reviewed?
- —What happens to a company that buys the tray, the panels and the sanitaryware before the portal feels like paying?
What we do instead
You can visit us at The Landmark, School Lane, Burnley. The quote is written. The design fee is £250 and it is refunded if you book the installation. Payments follow the job, not a stranger’s app. If something is wrong, you phone the company that fitted it. We are not a van that disappears, and we do not need a government badge to prove it.
We will frankly close the business before we consider joining a scheme like this. If the price of being allowed to fit a bathroom is handing our clients’ money to a system we think the government has no business running, we will not pay that price. Cowboy builders are a real problem. The answer is not to put every honest firm on a leash.
Our line
We are not joining. We will not pass a scheme fee on to you, because we will not incur one. If you want a bathroom from a company that still contracts with you directly, that is what we are.
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Quick answers
Are you signed up to the government’s payment scheme?+
No. We are not joining the government-backed milestone escrow for home-improvement payments. Our clients pay ProActive, on a written schedule, for work we are actually doing.
Does that mean you want all the money up front?+
No. A booking amount, payments as materials and work happen, and a balance at handover is a normal contract. That is not the same as giving a third party the float and waiting for a portal to release it.
Who earns the interest while the money is held?+
That is one of the questions nobody promoting this has answered properly. If the client’s money and our labour are sitting in someone else’s account, the interest belongs to the people whose money it is — or it is a quiet fee. We will not find out by signing up.
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