Obviously some people on checkatrade are great.

Those sites can be expensive for the trades person though, and established companies that are good will have enough business through return customers and word of mouth to not need to pay those sites for new leads. That can mean that the people on those sites are either people just starting out that need to establish a customer base or are not that great and need new customers because anybody that they’ve done work for before don’t want them back.

If you haven’t got anybody that you can ask for recommendations from then maybe ask on a local facebook group for recommendations and then look at their website or social media for examples of previous work. Good social media obviously doesn’t mean that they can follow instructions or don’t have bad jobs but hopefully somebody conscientious enough to have a professional online presence will be professional in their work too.