DIY in the home has become less about Doing It Yourself and more about You Do It. According to reports from Legal and General Insurance company this week.

Legal and General say that 41 per cent of britains would rather than roll up our sleeves sooner pay £700 a year on help from outside contractors in the home. Cleaning, gardening, dog walking, ironing, and window cleaners.

Are we going to give up our hired help and tighten our belts with the credit crunch looming though? Not likely to be the case for much of London where lifestyles are too crazy to get their hands dirty and do some DIY or waive a duster around.

A 30% minority of people asked were honest enough to say they just paid for help because they would prefer not to do the chores themselves, and with cheaper labout available from immigrants the temptation is too great. It is the under-25s who get help the most, is this a sign of a new age? or culture for Britain.

The credit crunch has hit the DIY and garden trade.

A dip in like-for-likes is shown in Poor March .

Diy and garden sales had a rough ride in March due to the poor weather and consumers reining in spending, the BRC has said in its latest retail monitor.

“The early Easter and bad weather hit gardening hard and also discouraged exterior diy,” senior analyst of the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Joscelyne Hynard, said in the BRC’s March report.

She added: “The housing market weakness and consumer caution hit big-ticket items, but trade building held up, showing some growth and new decorative ranges helped indoor diy.”

Last month like-for-like sales fell by 1.6% (as opposed to 2007 when sales were up 3.9%). Not since July 2005 when cold wet weather hit sales has the decline been worse.

Food sales slowed after two strong months and clothing and footwear were the worst for eight years or more, compared with to diy and garden goods. Despite continued discounting and promotions, homewares and furniture fell also, the BRC said.

Analysts wait anxiously to see if price-conscious consumers will be tempted to buy and are now looking to April’s figures to further measure the extent of moves that cover promotions, range and price.

Halfiax Home Insurance has reently released data that shows Brits undertaking DIY or home renovation projects cause their neighbours up to £173 million worth of damage in an average year. They advise that you need to make sure your home insurance covers you if your neighbours undertake DIY disaster projects.

Last year, around 594,960 houseowners in the country said their property was damaged by their neighbours’ home improvement disasters.

Over a third said they had to cover the cost of the repairs themselves, further emphasising the importance of obtaining the proper insurance policy.

Alliance & Leicester underwriting head, David Rochester, commented: “A number of errant DIYers are not just damaging their properties, but their neighbours’ homes too.

“But even more interesting is that so many victims handle the situation with typically British aplomb. Indeed, over two-thirds of them chose to pay towards the cost of repairing their home - rather than create a fuss.

“Perhaps they weren’t aware that they could have claimed for repairing the damage on their neighbour’s insurance policy.”

Recent research from Lloyds was released showing the importance of people to also opt for insurance that covered their garden possessions, as these were worth around £1,237.