Did your builder leave mid-project with £15,000? Here’s a payment structure that would have protected you

It is one of the most distressing things that can happen during a renovation. You have done your research, chosen someone who seemed professional, handed over a significant sum of money, and then, one day, they simply stop showing up. Tools put down, phones unanswered, and £15,000 of your savings gone with them. It sounds extreme, but it is far more common than most people realise, and it leaves homeowners not just out of pocket but emotionally blindsided, staring at a half-finished renovation and wondering how on earth they let it happen.

The painful truth is that in most of these cases, the homeowner did nothing obviously wrong. They trusted someone. They wanted to get the project moving. They did not want to seem difficult. And without a clear framework in place, they had no real protection when things went wrong.

This week, we put the question to Thomas, our Co-founder and resident renovation expert. Thomas knows this world inside out, not just from years of helping homeowners navigate complex projects, but from personal experience too. He has been burned by a cowboy builder and subsequently had his own bathroom renovated by Andrius, one of The Page’s most trusted and frequently used Pagers. He has felt the pain of being left high and dry and then seen what a well-managed renovation looks like from both sides of the relationship. His answer came down to three things:

Get it in writing before anything else

The single most important thing you can do before a builder sets foot in your home is have a proper contract in place. A written contract that clearly sets out the scope of work, the timeline, the costs, and what happens if any of those things change.

A contract does several things at once. It gives you legal recourse if a builder disappears or fails to deliver. It establishes shared expectations from day one, so there is no room for ambiguity. And, perhaps most importantly, it shifts the dynamic of the relationship entirely. When something is in writing, both parties are accountable. The project becomes a professional arrangement rather than an informal agreement built on goodwill.

A builder who is serious, experienced, and confident in their work will have no hesitation signing a contract. It is standard practice for any professional operating legitimately. If someone pushes back, makes excuses, or tries to move things forward without one, that tells you something important. It is not a red flag to be explained away. It is a reason to walk away.

Structure your payments around completed work, not promises

Milestone payments, sometimes called stage payments, mean that the project is broken into agreed phases, and payment is released at the end of each phase once the work has been completed to a satisfactory standard. First fix complete, payment released. Plastering done and signed off, next payment released. Kitchen fitted and inspected, next stage unlocked. Each payment follows the work, not the other way around.

This structure changes the entire dynamic on site. Your builder is always working towards earning the next payment, which keeps momentum going and keeps them accountable. It also means that if something does go wrong, your exposure is limited to the most recent stage of work, not the entire project. You have not handed over your leverage in one lump sum at the start. You have kept it distributed throughout, which is exactly where it should be.

In practice, the number and size of milestones will depend on the scale and complexity of the project. A bathroom renovation might have three or four clear stages; strip out, first fix, tiling and fitting, snagging. A full house refurbishment might have ten or more. The important thing is that they are agreed upfront, written into the contract, and tied to specific, verifiable deliverables rather than vague notions of progress.

A fair deposit, not a large one

Asking for a deposit is entirely normal, and a reasonable one is something you should expect to pay. It covers the cost of materials being ordered, helps the builder manage their cash flow at the start of the job, and signals that you are a committed and serious client. None of that is unreasonable.

What is unreasonable, and what Thomas is clear about, is a large deposit that bears no relation to the scope of work being undertaken upfront. If a builder asks for, say, 50%,before a single thing has been done, that is a warning sign. A deposit of that size hands over a substantial portion of your financial leverage before the relationship has had any chance to prove itself. If that builder then disappears, as happened in the scenario we opened with, you are already significantly out of pocket with very little recourse.

A fair deposit typically reflects the genuine upfront costs of materials that need to be purchased and perhaps some preparatory work. Keep the deposit proportionate, keep your milestone structure intact, and you retain the kind of control that makes a renovation feel manageable rather than frightening.

The bottom line

The homeowner who lost £15,000 is not unusual, and they are not foolish. They were simply operating without the structures in place that could have protected them. A clear contract, a staged payment schedule, and a fair deposit are not bureaucratic formalities, they are the difference between a renovation that stays on track and one that falls apart. Get them in place before anything else moves.