The pay protect story

Hello my name is Neil Timmins and I am the founder of Pay Protect Limited.

I left school in 1993, and started working for a lytho printing company located on the outskirts of Birmingham City Centre, I then moved to work for British Rail in multiple different roles. Despite really enjoying my time with British Rail I made the decision to leave and start a career in the Motor Industry as a Trainee Sales Executive. It was during this time that I learnt to communicate and interact with different generations and demographics of people, gaining valuable life experience.

At the turn of the century in 2000 I was head hunted and asked to join a new start-up Motor Company.

I joined as a Sales Executive, swiftly moving into Sales Management, then progressing to a Dealer Principal and a Shareholding Director.

I committed the next 23 years to growing that business from a single site to multiple Dealerships located across the West Midlands, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire. We employed over 280 people and our annual turnover exceeded £180 million.

In July 2023 my successful Motor Industry career came to a natural conclusion when the other founding Directors stood away from the business and family members were introduced to more senior roles. It was time for me to take a well-deserved break from the Group and Industry.

Since leaving my main focus has been to catch up on some very important and valuable family time with my 2 young children and long-suffering wife. The simple things are sometimes understated and not appreciated like taking and collecting the children from school, cooking, enjoying family meals together and watching them enjoy their activities such as netball, football and horse riding.

I regularly talk to previous respected work colleagues, friends and family members and discussed possible jobs and business opportunities. I wanted to do something totally different, that took me out of my comfort zone and that added value or solved a real-world issue.

In December 2023 I was having a drink and a catch up with a friend when the discussion got onto a small extension that we had done at my house. My wife and I were really pleased with the completed project, the communication from the builder and the whole process had gone very well throughout. While we were chatting, my friend said how lucky we had been and that the process isn’t always as good and that the industry is burdened with payment issues and half completed unsatisfactory jobs.

At the time I didn’t realise the impact that conversation had but something resonated with me. A few years earlier we had our garden fully landscaped with a modern finish with high planters, porcelain tiles and horizontal fencing. It is fair to say that the landscaper was very unprofessional and although we paid in full the finished product was far from acceptable.

Upon completion, there where so many basic and simple things that were far from satisfactory like weeds in the newly laid grass, bricks and rubbish in the planters and the wooden fence hadn’t been treated to protect it from the weather. We weren’t even supplied with an electrical certificate for the lights that they had fitted.

I asked some friends who are skilled tradespeople electricians, plumbers and builders about issues that they have faced and I was shocked to hear how much money they were owed for satisfactorily completed jobs and the delay’s that they experienced on a regular basis.

I started to carry out further research and it quickly became clear that the issue was not an isolated incident but an epidemic. The implications were huge for both tradespeople and customers alike. There were numbers of unscrupulous tradespeople providing poor quality work, jobs or projects not being completed or even worse taking a deposit or money up front for materials but never starting or completing the agreed job or project.

In 2021 Tradespeople were owed as much as £1 billion in overdue or non-payments which equates to an average of £1062 each. This figure has exponentially risen in 2024 to £3.5 billion at an average of £3942 each.

This culture is crippling tradespeople and small businesses. It is also having a negative effect on customers who are concerned and worried about being ripped off or their house being left in a dangerous or unsafe condition.

If you look at some of the big companies within this market for example Checkatrade, Which or TrustATrader etc they all have sections within their websites that go into great detail with regards to this subject. Much of it is common sense, some of it is unrealistic and the rest is important helpful information. All of them acknowledge that some customers delay payment, try to get money of the agreed price and even worse the ‘professional non-payer’ who try to avoid paying altogether. All of these scenarios can be and in many cases are devastating for small businesses. Unfortunately, as the financial figures above show the issue is getting worse every day.

My mission was simple let’s find a way of stopping this huge issue and help both tradespeople and customers achieve what has been agreed with as little stress and problems as possible. Over the next 12 months Pay Protect Limited was born.

At Pay Protect, we bridge the gap between customers and tradesmen, ensuring peace of mind for both parties. For customers, we provide the assurance that their job or project will be completed to satisfaction, while tradesmen can trust that they’ll get paid promptly for their hard work.

With our transparent and easy-to-use platform, you can have peace of mind knowing that your financial transactions are in safe hands.