Building company collapse a blight on our industry

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Builders generally work hard to build the best possible houses and buildings they can. And members of Registered Master Builders are renowned for doing work of the highest quality.
We have a proud history of being “professional tradesman” — working with our hands and tools to build great homes, and “shaking hands” on the deal with clients.

However, every now and then things don’t go that well. The quality of the building work might not be quite up to the expected standard. Or, a builder might not operate as ethically or within the law as they should.

And, every now and then — and fortunately not too often — a builder can act with deceit and dishonesty, putting at jeopardy the integrity and trust of the whole industry.
A few weeks ago a recently-suspended member, Balmoral Homes, still marketed themselves as a member of Master Builders and took deposits and other payments from clients, when clearly it was not legally within their right to do so.

When the company collapsed, they left a good number of disaffected clients, some of them caught out by the fact that the building company had had its membership suspended some time earlier.

In doing so, Balmoral Homes was acting illegally and dishonestly, and put a blight on the whole construction industry.
We will be helping those clients with valid Master Build Guarantees, as well as doing our best for those clients caught out by the collapse without valid Guarantees, as we have done with past clients caught out in similar cases.

We will also be taking what action we consider necessary to alert the relevant authorities as to the actions of the Balmoral Homes directors.
We can’t stop every building company from acting illegally or dishonestly. We will stand behind our Master Build Guarantee and support affected clients as best we can.

Overall, we continue to have great faith in the quality of work put in place by our members, and their general integrity and business skills.
Fortunately, collapses like Balmoral Homes don’t happen too often — but when they do, they do tend to discredit us all.

Footnote:

In this issue of Building Today you will find the very last column from RMBF president Ashley Hartley before he stands down as president.
Ashley has been an outstanding president for the RMBF over the past two years, working well beyond the time and effort we would normally expect from an honorary elected position, even that of president.

We have made great strides as an organisation in Ashley’s time as president, and much of that can be put down to his tireless efforts, his dedication to Registered Master Builders, his superlative networking among Associations and members, and his fantastic work with Government.

As chief executive, I would like to extend my personal thanks and gratitude to Ashley for his sterling work, and I am sure all our members, stakeholders and officials would support me on this.

Ashley, we salute you! And Denise, you can now have Ashley back for once!

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