Terms and conditions for a builder doing domestic work

A builder working in someone's home needs terms that survive a job running for months: the stage payment schedule, the provisional sums, the joist that turns out to be rotten, the customer who moves the bathroom after first fix, and the final account nobody wants to discuss. I draft those terms for a fixed fee of £995, delivered in five working days.

Who this is for

Building firms in England and Wales carrying out extensions, loft conversions, structural alterations, garage conversions and whole-house refurbishments, whether you trade as a sole trader or a limited company. Most of your customers are homeowners, who are consumers in law. Some are landlords, developers or property companies, who are not. One set of terms has to deal with both.

What matters in a domestic builder's terms

The price, provisional sums and what nobody could see

You priced from drawings and a walk round the house. Until the floor is up and the plaster is off, nobody knows about the rotten wall plate, the failed footings, the asbestos in the ceiling or the drain running exactly where the extension goes. Your terms should state what the quoted figure includes and excludes, identify provisional and prime cost sums as estimates to be adjusted against actual cost, and set out how unforeseen work is notified, priced and agreed in writing before it proceeds. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 information a consumer relies on is binding, so what your quotation says about exclusions genuinely matters.

Stage payments on a job that runs for months

A contract with a residential occupier sits outside the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, so there is no statutory adjudication and no statutory payment scheme sitting behind you. Everything about when money falls due comes from your own terms: a schedule tied to identifiable stages such as damp proof course, wall plate, roof watertight, first fix and plaster, a stated period for payment, and what happens when a stage is not paid.

Where the customer is a developer or a landlord acting in the course of a business, that Act does apply to construction operations, bringing adjudication, payment notice rules, a ban on pay-when-paid and staged payments where the work is intended to last forty-five days or more. Separately, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 gives interest and fixed compensation on unpaid commercial debts. For homeowners, any interest rate has to be stated in the terms and kept modest, because the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats disproportionate default charges as suspect.

Cancellation rights when the contract was agreed at the kitchen table

Building work agreed at the customer's home, or by email and phone, falls within the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. The customer has fourteen days to cancel. If you order steels and start stripping out inside that period without the customer's express request, you may be paid nothing for it, and if the cancellation information was never given the period can extend by up to twelve months. On a job priced in tens of thousands that is a serious exposure. The terms also have to reach the customer before they accept, because binding a consumer to wording they had no real chance to see is on the grey list under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Variations, and the customer who instructs your bricklayer directly

Almost every domestic building dispute I see is about work that was asked for on site and never written down. Sockets moved, a rooflight added, better tiles chosen, a wall taken out while you are there. Your terms should require variations to be confirmed in writing, with the price and the effect on the programme, before the work goes ahead, and should say that instructions given to your trades or subcontractors on site are not variations until you have confirmed them. Where the customer supplies their own materials or appliances, the terms should put the risk of delay, damage and unsuitability back where it belongs.

Programme, access, consents and the household living in the house

Completion dates on domestic work are estimates, and your terms should say so, along with what happens when weather, building control inspection dates, materials lead times or the customer's own kitchen supplier hold you up. Deal with access and keys, parking, welfare, power and water, storage of materials, skip placement, and unavoidable dust and disruption to a family living on site. Planning permission, building control applications and any party wall agreements should be the customer's responsibility unless you are paid to handle them. If you take spoil and rubble away yourself you must be registered as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency.

Completion, snagging, defects and liability

Define completion, then define the defects period that follows it, and keep them apart. Say how snags are listed and how long you have to attend, what retention if any is held and when it is released, and what your guarantee covers. Where certain building work must be certified or notified under the Building Regulations, the terms should say who obtains sign-off. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires services to be carried out with reasonable care and skill and stops you limiting liability for a service below the price, and no contract can exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence. A cap and an exclusion of consequential loss still do real work for business customers, subject to the reasonableness test under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.

What it costs

Customer or supplier terms and conditions, £995. One set of terms, customer-facing or supplier-facing, drafted around your business. Five working days.

Review of your existing terms, £495. You already have terms and want to know how much of a problem they are. Returned marked up with my amendments and an explanation of the changes. Three working days.

Buying online forms the engagement on payment. The scope is what the terms and conditions drafting page describes, you accept the Terms of Service at checkout, and I email you within four working hours to get started. If you would rather ask something first, email me.

What you get

• A full set of terms drafted around your business, not a template with your name inserted
• A covering note in plain English explaining every commercial choice I made and why, so you can defend the terms in a negotiation without ringing me
• Liability, payment, termination and IP provisions set at a level that will survive a procurement review
• Consumer-facing wording drafted to be enforceable where you sell to consumers
• Guidance on how to incorporate the terms properly, which is where most businesses actually fail
• One round of amendments after you have read them

What is not included

• Negotiating your terms with individual customers
• Sector-specific regulatory compliance beyond the contract terms themselves
• Website privacy notice and cookie compliance, which I quote separately
• Terms governed by the law of another country

Questions I am often asked

How much can I ask for before I start?

A deposit proportionate to the materials you are ordering and the start date you are holding is normal on domestic building work. The terms should say what it covers and what happens to it on cancellation. Keeping a prepayment when the customer cancels, without any matching obligation on you, is the kind of term the Consumer Rights Act 2015 singles out as unfair.

The customer is withholding the whole final payment over a short snagging list. What should the terms say?

They should separate completion from perfection. Payment falls due when the work is complete and usable, against a defined retention held only for listed outstanding items and released once those are attended to. Without that structure a homeowner can keep the entire balance while arguing about paint on a window frame, and you are left chasing it.

The architect wants me on a standard form building contract instead. Do I still need my own terms?

On a project with a professional team you may well end up signing their form, and the real question then is what the amendments do to your payment, programme and liability. That is a review rather than a drafting job. For everything else you quote for, your own terms are what gets incorporated when the customer accepts.

Related guidance and services

• Terms and conditions drafting, £995, the service this page describes
• Contract review, £495
• Consultancy and contractor agreements, £595
• Terms and conditions for a builder doing commercial work
• Terms and conditions for a kitchen and bathroom fitter

This page is general guidance for businesses in England and Wales, not advice on your own circumstances. Last reviewed: September 2026. Email geoffrey@caesar.co.uk.