Any rules/legislation on using trades people for community work

Hi, we are needing a property painting in our community and to get best value for the work required we could use a property owner from the community and pay him for his time. He will be a lot cheaper than using a painting company. He has done lots of painting work for people and it’s too a high standard. However, as it’s community money being spent do we have to use a registered company? Are there any safe guards we have to do?

Some of the previous work done for the community in the past couple of years has not been good value for money, very expensive actually. Trying to save money but don’t want to fall foul of any legislation.

Thanks

Colin