A bad workmanship claim in England and Wales rests on one legal test: did the trader perform the service with reasonable care and skill, as every service contract is treated as requiring under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
The legal starting point
This is general information, not legal advice, and the court material below applies to England and Wales. If you are facing a dispute with a builder, the starting point is section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. It says every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill. That single sentence is the legal basis for almost every bad workmanship claim a homeowner brings.
Reasonable care and skill is not perfection. It is the standard a competent tradesperson in that trade would be expected to meet. Whether a particular piece of work falls short is a question of fact, and nobody can tell you in advance what a court would decide on your case.
What it looks like room by room
The standard is the same throughout the house, but what counts as falling short of it varies by trade and by room. Some examples of the kind of thing homeowners raise:
- Kitchen: units not fixed level, worktop joints that have opened up, plumbing connections that leak under the sink
- Bathroom: tiling with hollow spots or uneven grout lines, silicone sealant failing early, extractor fans wired but not working
- Bedrooms and living areas: plaster cracking along joints, paint finish showing roller marks or poor coverage, flooring laid with visible gaps
- Electrics: sockets not properly earthed, light fittings loose, circuits not labelled at the consumer unit
- Exterior and roof: pointing left incomplete, guttering not falling to the outlet, flashing missing at a junction
None of these automatically proves a breach. What matters is whether the finished work, taken as a whole, falls below what a competent tradesperson in that trade would have produced.
Your options once work has fallen short
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets out what a consumer can ask for once a service has not been performed with reasonable care and skill.
Section 55 gives the consumer the right to require the trader to perform the service again so that it conforms to the contract. The trader must do this within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience, and must bear any necessary costs, including in particular the cost of labour or materials. Repeat performance cannot be required if completing the work in conformity with the contract is impossible.
Section 56 gives the consumer the right to require the trader to reduce the price by an appropriate amount. This applies where repeat performance cannot be required, or where the trader has not carried it out within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience. Any refund due under this right must be paid without undue delay and in any event within 14 days of the day the trader agrees the consumer is entitled to it, using the same means the consumer used to pay, with no fee charged for making it.
Adjudication: who this actually applies to
You may come across adjudication as a way of resolving construction disputes quickly. Section 108 of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 gives a party to a construction contract the right to refer a dispute to adjudication at any time, with a tight timetable: the adjudicator is appointed and the dispute referred within 7 days of notice, and the adjudicator must decide within 28 days of referral, extendable by up to 14 days with the consent of the referring party. The decision is binding until the dispute is finally resolved by legal proceedings, arbitration or agreement.
If it ends up in the small claims track
Many homeowner disputes that reach court are handled on the small claims track, which generally applies to claims not exceeding £10,000, under Civil Procedure Rules Part 27. A few features of that track matter for how you prepare:
- Rule 27.5 says no expert may give evidence, written or oral, at a hearing without the court’s permission
- Standard directions require each party to file and serve copies of all documents they intend to rely on, at least 14 days before the final hearing
- The strict rules of evidence do not apply, and the court need not take evidence on oath
This makes your own documentation more important, not less. Photographs taken at the time, dated and organised by room, are the kind of evidence that sits well within these rules. An app like SayScope, built for walking a property and recording each defect with a photo and a note on the spot, can help you build that record before a dispute even starts, though no tool changes what the legal test is or what a court will decide.