Home improvement agencies are funded by local authorities (councils) and other public sector organisations such as Fire and Rescue Services, the police, and primary care trusts. Each of these will monitor the performance of your home improvement agency for the areas of work that they provide funding for.
Local authorities often use a national 'framework' that measures things like the number of people the agency has helped, and how long the jobs take the agency to complete.
Monitoring may be different from area to area, depending on the type of work the agency is being funded for. For example, the Fire and Rescue Service will be interested in the number of homes where smoke alarms have been installed, and Adult Social Care will want to know how many hand rails or stairlifts have been installed to help people continue living independently in their own homes.
Home improvement agencies also report to their funders on the levels of client satisfaction, so if you have received a service from an agency they may ask for your comments on how you believe they performed.
Many home improvement agencies are accredited by schemes that monitor the quality of their services. This may be:
The Home Improvement Agency Quality Mark which is run by Foundations, the national body for home improvement agencies in England
The government's Customer Service Excellence scheme
Agencies which have been accredited by one of these schemes will often include a logo on their information leaflet or other printed material that you see.
Most home improvement agencies keep lists of approved local contractors to make sure your work is carried out by the best contractors in your area. To be accepted onto the home improvement agency list, all contractors undergo stringent vetting procedures, and are constantly monitored to ensure that they deliver good quality work on time and within budget.
