UK landscaping associations just haven't got a clue

It is probably not a good thing that I am sitting here at my keyboard typing - I should be walking the dogs and enjoying the Autumnal weather.

Why? because I am feeling a little angry and again extremely frustrated by the rhetoric that is coming from the UK's landscaping associations.

Reading an article in Hort Week this morning, Mitch Westwood of Rogue Traders, says that the recession has caused an erosion of landscaping standards and says anyone can buy a wheel barrow and a few tools and set up as a landscaper and goes on to say that it's not the easiest of trades to do well in.

Well, I agree so far, but as one of those landscapers who threw a few tools into the back of a car on the 21st May 1984, I am offended by the implication that I am not worthy of being in the profession.

I started at 19 years of age and sold my business twenty one years later having employed lots of people and spawned many new businesses, been a member of the APL and won one of their awards. I also paid for my own passage through Merrist Wood and Sparsholt College's gaining City and Guilds level three in amenity horticulture and greenkeeping.

I didn't go on to take any higher education but I believe that learned and developed many creative skills from generations of different trades who I worked with and for.

I made mistakes - I would not believe a single APL or BALI landscaper who told me that they didn't - and I made decisions I regretted. I even had to re-do work done by a very prominent APL member.

There are many many people like me who have started as an odd-jobber and made a solid business and many of them need trade associations like a hole in the head.

Westwood says [HW]: "those who knock trade associations are further eroding standards: "With all trade associations, only the good guys are going to join. Guys who are going to do a quick, cheap job - why are they going to join? I'm all for trade associations. They give clients more confidence. Contractors are vetted and not just sending in £10 and getting a sticker for the van."

This statement is so patronising to so many good people. How many thousands of landscapers, gardeners and designers - not to mention product and service providers to the trade - are there in Great Britain?

The APL has 360'ish members and BALI have under the 700 that they quote - Is Mitch Westwood (who incidentally, doesn't say if he is a member of BALI or the APL on his website) telling me that those individuals and businesses who are not inside these two organisations is because they are doing a cheap quick job and that they are not concerned with the quality of their work? I am incensed by this!

Let me get one thing straight - I am not against trade associations per se. I believe in tight control, I believe in education and training and I believe in ambition and targets.

I am on record as saying - and I stick by this wholeheartedly - that the outdated trade association system which continues to be practised in the UK is flawed. There is no way that a committee of self appointed practising landscapers should dictate who should or shouldn't be worthy of adorning their badge.

Every individual or business is more than capable - especially now that the Internet is such an everyday tool - of building a profile and portfolio of themselves and demonstrating, through audio and visual means, what level of competence and experience they have achieved.

If they were punching above their weight they will surely be shot down in flames. The Landscape Juice Network brings transparency to its free membership.

The responsibility is very much on the business to be honest about themselves and what they are capable of doing. Any client being sent to or landing on the site has the option to click through to any member profile and read about them and their work.

Unlike APL and BALI, potential and existing clients can also start or participate in debate and leave comment on individual profiles. Because the client also has to leave their real names and details, only those with a genuine complaint will do so if they know that they are accountable.

BALI chief executive, Sandra Loton-Jones, takes the biscuit with this quote: "Our members' contracts are as keen as they can be and they get increasingly frustrated when they find the work they hoped to get has been taken by people who are not VAT registered and not fully aware of the legislative position."

Loton-Jones continued with this: ""These people devalue the industry and make it look like something anyone can turn to."

What has VAT got to do with it and what right does an association member have to first refusal on jobs that come onto the market. 'These people'? What people? are they criminals?

APL CEO, Jason Lock says: "My overriding concern is that there is the temptation in tight economic times to price a contract short to win the work.

"In these instances, nobody wins. The contractor makes no money and invariably has to cut corners and the client is short-changed with substandard work. It may be a short-term fix but in the long term it will affect their reputation."

Err, no. Both these organisation are extending their patronisation to their clients. Is a client not capable of making an informed choice? What about healthy competition? What about an association business coming into the real world and pitching his skills in a full pool of competing businesses? What about a fair playing field? Under the open-association philosophy, the right contractor will win the work at the right price.

APL and BALI members have surely enjoyed a premium return for their membership over the years - they had no opposition until now but, now, only businesses capable of doing a job are being considered by wise clients.

In a separate HW article, Jason Lock calls for tighter regulation for domestic landscapers saying that domestic projects are more like civil engineering jobs.

He says that both domestic and commercial contracts should be treated the same but how many domestic clients call for risk assessments and health and safety documents?

Jason is still working in the old world where the mentality was for information to be 'pulled' from the contractor.

In today's digital world, the practice is very much about 'pushing' information. It's about educating contractors to send in their supporting literature, including risk assessments and health and safety documents, without being asked.

Let's give the client some credit - they are capable of making a decision that suits them. I think one of the problems that the associations won't admit to is that many clients who get a raw deal are pushing a contractor to do too much with insufficient budgets.

The contractor, wanting to help and do the right thing, agrees and then the client changes his face once the contractor is hooked into the deal.

LJN is all about all-round education - whether that's for the contractor or the client.

...Now for that walk - come on dogs.