How to find a tradesperson who is actually free today
Not how to find a plumber — how to find one who can come out this afternoon. Those are different problems, and almost everything written about the first one is useless for the second.
There is no shortage of advice about finding a good tradesperson. Check their reviews, ask for references, get it in writing, make sure they are registered with the right body. All sensible, and all written for somebody planning a kitchen.
None of it helps at four o'clock on a Tuesday when the shower has stopped working and you need somebody today.
That is a different problem. It is not "who is good" — it is "who is free", and the honest answer is that most of the internet cannot tell you. Here is what actually works, roughly in the order worth trying.
Ring the one you already use first, and ask the right question
If you have somebody — a plumber who has been before, the garage you always use — ring them first, even if you assume they are busy. You are not a cold call to them, and people move things around for customers they know.
Ask a better question than "can you come today". Ask "have you had any cancellations, or have you got a gap later in the week?" Cancellations are extremely common and almost never advertised. A plumber whose 2pm just dropped out has a problem you can solve.
If the answer is no, ask the second question: "is there anyone you would send me to?" Trades know who is good and who is quiet, and a recommendation from one is worth more than twenty reviews from strangers.
Stop trusting "24/7" and "emergency callout"
Search for an emergency plumber and you will find page after page advertising 24-hour availability. Some of them mean it. Many are lead-generation sites that take your details and sell them on, and some are national call centres that will dispatch somebody from an hour away at a premium.
Two quick tests before you ring:
- Does the page have a real local address and a landline? Mobile-only with no address, on a site that could be about any town, is usually a lead broker.
- Does the phone number change depending on which town page you are looking at? If the same site shows a different number for Chorley and for Blackburn, you are almost certainly calling a switchboard, not a trade.
Neither test is conclusive. Both filter out a lot.
Message several at once instead of ringing them in order
Ringing round is slow because it is serial — you wait for each answer before trying the next. Sending the same short message to six people at once takes two minutes and you will often have an answer before the second phone call would have connected.
Keep it short and lead with the thing that decides it:
Hi — dripping kitchen tap, needs sorting today or tomorrow if possible. Chorley. Are you free?
Say the job, the town, and the timing. Most people do not reply to "are you busy?" because it is not a question they can answer usefully.
Try the places where availability is actually published
A few kinds of business do publish real-time availability, and it is worth knowing which:
- Garages and MOT centres often have online booking with live slots.
- Salons, barbers and clinics increasingly use booking software that shows genuine gaps — and a cancellation reappears in it immediately.
- Facebook and Instagram are where most small local businesses announce a gap. Searching a business's page for recent posts will sometimes find "two spaces left tomorrow" from this morning.
The catch with the last one is timing. By the time a cancellation reaches a story, it is often gone — and you have to already follow the right fifteen businesses to see it.
What we built, and what it does not do
This is the gap Speedi exists for, so take this part with the bias it deserves.
Businesses on Speedi set their own traffic light — green for free now, amber for free shortly, red for busy — and it expires on a timer. So a green light means somebody said so in the last couple of hours, not that a listing has been sitting there since 2019. You can see who is free on a live map, and you can follow the businesses you already use and be told the moment one becomes free, including when a cancellation opens a slot.
Two honest limits.
It only knows about businesses that have told it. If nobody near you has set a light today, Speedi will say so rather than show you a list of people who might be free. We publish that number publicly, by town — Chorley, Preston, Blackburn — and on a lot of days it is small. That is the real number, and a platform that rounded it up would not be worth checking.
It is not a vetting service. Speedi shows you who is available and puts you in touch. Checking somebody is competent and insured is still your job, the same as it would be with a recommendation from a neighbour.
The short version
- Ring your usual person first and ask about cancellations, not availability.
- Ask them who they would send you to.
- Treat "24/7" as marketing until proven otherwise.
- Message several at once, with the job, the town and the timing in the first line.
- Check the places that publish real availability rather than claimed availability.
The underlying truth is that somebody near you almost certainly has a gap this afternoon. The problem has never been supply. It is that gaps are invisible, and the people who have them have no good way to tell you.