Handyman Services near you

The economics of small jobs are all about the visit rather than the task. Three twenty-minute jobs on one visit cost far less than three separate call-outs, so the list is worth building up rather than burning on a single shelf.

Gas comes first because the rule is absolute. Under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, no person shall carry out any work in relation to a gas fitting or gas storage vessel unless he is competent to do so, and an employer or self-employed person carrying out such work must be a member of a class of persons approved by the Health and Safety Executive. In practice that class is the Gas Safe Register: HSE states that anyone employed to work on gas appliances in domestic premises must be a Gas Safe registered engineer and competent in that area of gas work. Registered engineers carry an ID card that tells you which appliances they are qualified to work on, and the card is the thing to ask for. Connecting a gas hob, moving a gas cooker, touching a boiler or running a gas pipe is not handyman work, however small it looks.

Electrical work is more nuanced, which is why it catches people out. Approved Document P is the Building Regulation in England covering electrical safety in dwellings, and the Building Regulations 2010 set out what has to be notified: the installation of a new circuit, the replacement of a consumer unit, and any addition or alteration to existing circuits in a special location, which means the zones around baths and showers and rooms containing a swimming pool or sauna heater. Work that is not notifiable still has to meet the standard; it simply does not have to be told to anyone.

Notifiable work has two lawful routes. An installer registered with a competent person scheme can self-certify the work, which is what schemes exist for across electrical installations, gas appliances, replacement windows and doors, heating and hot water and several other categories. Otherwise the work has to be notified to building control before it starts. A handyman who is not registered and has not notified anyone is not in either route. Note also that Approved Document P is an England document: Scotland runs a separate system under the Building (Scotland) Act 2003, in which local authority verifiers grant a building warrant for work and a completion certificate afterwards, so ask locally if you are not in England.

Falls from height are the reason this has its own body of law. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 exist to prevent death and injury from falls, and they apply to employers and to anyone who controls work at height. Employers and those in control of any work at height activity must first assess the risks and must make sure the work is properly planned, supervised and carried out by competent people.

For a household that translates into a small number of questions. Is this job being done from a ladder because a ladder is right for it, or because a tower would cost more? Is the ladder footed, tied or stabilised on ground that will not move? Is this a two-person job? And is the person doing it insured, because a fall in your garden becomes your problem faster than you would like. Gutter clearing on a two-storey house and anything at roof level are the jobs where the honest answer is often to book a firm equipped for height rather than the person who came to hang a shelf.

Small jobs stall on the wrong fixing more often than on skill, so settle who is buying what before the visit. If you buy the materials, you carry the risk of buying the wrong ones and a second visit; if the handyman buys them, expect the time spent to appear in the bill. Either way, send photographs of the wall, the bracket, the tap or the hinge in advance, and measure anything that has to fit an opening.

Waste is worth a separate sentence. A business that transports waste is a carrier and generally has to be registered, although registration is usually free where the business only transports waste it produces itself. If old units, a mattress, fencing or building rubble are leaving in someone's van, ask what happens to it: a householder who hands waste to an unregistered carrier can end up answering for where it is fly-tipped.

Small-job pricing is hard to do sight unseen, so help it along. Number the jobs, photograph each one, say what the walls are made of where anything is being fixed, and note the parking and access. Then ask for the visit to be quoted as a whole rather than task by task, and flag anything that might turn out to be gas or notifiable electrical work so nobody is improvising on the day.

LokalMatch is where that list turns into replies: you describe the jobs once, and handyman businesses covering your postcode contact you themselves. They pay for the requests they take; the description costs you nothing. LokalMatch does not carry out the work, does not set the price and does not vet, rank or endorse the businesses that respond, which is why the questions about registration, insurance and who does the gas or electrical parts stay with you.

Handyman work rarely comes with a certificate, and for most of it none exists. Where notifiable electrical work has been done properly you should end up with evidence: either a certificate from the installer's competent person scheme confirming the work was self-certified, or a building control completion notice. Keep those with the house papers, because they are what a buyer's solicitor will ask about later.

For everything else the protection is the Consumer Rights Act 2015. A contract to supply a service is treated as including a term that the trader must perform it with reasonable care and skill, within a reasonable time where none was agreed, for a reasonable price where none was fixed. If the work falls short, you can require the trader to re-perform it within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to you, at their cost, and where that is impossible or does not happen, you can require an appropriate price reduction. Put the complaint in writing with photographs and give the trader the chance to come back: that is the sequence the Act assumes.