What the Rated People Collapse Means for Your Lead Pipeline
The sudden closure of Rated People memberships in September 2026 showed how quickly directory leads can vanish. This post explains what happened, why renting access to someone else’s audience is a risk, and how a simple owned website gives tradespeople more control over their pipeline.
Thousands of UK tradespeople opened their phones one morning in mid-September and found their Rated People memberships gone. No warning. The leads that had been part of the diary simply stopped.
That is not a quiet price rise or a change in the algorithm. It is a platform closing every account overnight.
What actually happened
On 16 September 2026 Rated People Limited entered creditors’ voluntary liquidation. Every tradesperson membership closed the same day. More detail is in the Rated People announcement and the Checkatrade note.
The next day Checkatrade Group acquired selected assets, mainly the brand and the website. It did not acquire the memberships or the accounts. From 18 September onwards, new jobs posted on the Rated People site have been matched to Checkatrade members rather than the previous Rated People base.
Homeowners can still post jobs. The site looks familiar. The tradespeople receiving those enquiries have changed.
Reviews built on Rated People do not automatically move across. Former members who want continued access must join Checkatrade separately, typically on a 12-month fixed-term membership. Questions about old memberships or residual data go to the liquidators at S&W Group (ratedpeople@swgroup.com). A useful summary of the timeline is on MyJobQuote.
Existing Checkatrade members gain the extra traffic through their current membership. Former Rated People members lost the lead flow immediately.
You were renting the pipeline
This is the sharpest recent illustration of a longer pattern.
On platforms like Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark and the old Rated People, you pay for access to other people’s audiences. You do not own the customer relationship, the review history or the lead flow.
Pricing, credit rules and algorithms can change unilaterally. Contracts can lock you in for a year while lead volume remains an estimate rather than a guarantee. Reviews you spend time collecting often stay on the platform. If you leave, or if the platform changes hands, that social proof does not automatically come with you.
Shared-lead models already dilute value. When the same enquiry is offered to multiple trades, conversion rates fall. An ownership change can remove the value entirely.
A business whose diary depends heavily on one or two directories is exposed to decisions made by the platform’s owners or liquidators. Those decisions are not required to prioritise the tradesperson who has been paying the fees.
Directories can still generate work. The risk is treating them as the foundation rather than a supplement. When the foundation moves, the diary takes the hit. That longer pattern is also covered in The Directory Badge Is Not a Guarantee.
Practical steps right now
If Rated People was a meaningful part of the work, check any communications you received. Contact the liquidators about residual data or potential refunds. Then decide deliberately whether Checkatrade’s current terms improve your numbers. Joining by default simply recreates the same dependency on a larger platform.
Next, audit the dependency. Roughly what percentage of jobs in a typical month come from directories versus referrals, Google, your own website, Facebook or direct contact? If one or two platforms account for a large share, the Rated People episode shows how quickly that share can shrink.
The practical response is to strengthen the channels you already control.
A Google Business Profile. A simple website that converts visitors into calls or enquiries. An email or SMS list of past customers. Local Facebook presence. A basic referral ask. Those assets keep working if a directory changes hands or changes its rules. The practical version of that setup is in How Tradesmen Can Escape Checkatrade and MyBuilder.
When you do use a directory, treat it as a top-up. Track the cost per won job rather than the membership fee alone. Encourage happy customers to leave feedback on Google or on your own site as well as on the directory. Reviews that live only on the platform do not travel with you.
A simple website is the owned alternative
Most of those owned channels work better when there is a clean place to send people.
Someone who finds the name on Google, or who gets a recommendation, still looks the business up before they call. If nothing solid appears, or if the only results are a directory listing that may no longer exist, some of them move on.
A straightforward one-page site with real photos, clear services and an easy contact form gives them that confidence before the first conversation starts. The enquiry arrives directly. No shared lead. No extra fee. No risk that the platform closes the account overnight. Phone shots are fine if they are sharp; more on what actually works is in The Photos Your Website Actually Needs.
The site works while you are on a job. Messages sit waiting. After-hours enquiries still land. The domain, the content and the customer details belong to the business. What to do when the phone goes unanswered is in What to do when you cannot answer the phone.
That is the difference. Directories rent visibility. The site is an asset you control.
A professional email that matches the domain finishes the package. It looks more established. Customers remember an address that matches the business name far more than a random Gmail. And you own the emails. These are your customers, not the free provider’s. Practical options are in How Does Email Forwarding Work?.
OnePageSites keeps the technical part out of the way
Most tradespeople do not want to learn website builders or endless updates. That is why the practical objection is usually time, not the idea itself.
OnePageSites handles the build. Fixed process. No technical decisions left with you. You tell us about the trade, send a few photos of real jobs if you have them, and the result is a clean, mobile-friendly one-page site. The finished site sits on your domain and is yours.
You can see real examples of the kind of practical sites we create on the Examples page. Many are for builders, plumbers, electricians and other trades who were busy on site and not interested in becoming web experts.
If the Rated People change has made the dependency obvious, a one-page site is one of the lowest-stress ways to start owning more of the pipeline.
Look at the Examples of sites already built for trades just like yours. When you want to talk through what would suit the business, Get in Touch. Tell us how customers currently find you. We will explain the options in plain English and give you a clear fixed price with no surprises.
Your skills already deliver the results on site. A simple online presence just makes sure more of the right customers can reach you directly when they need you.
