How can i find out a building contractors insurer if he wont disclose the information

How can i find out a building contractors insurer if he wont disclose the information please?

We had someone do about £30,000 worth of work, and he has botched every job he has done.

we are having to go through a solicitor now, and have had to pay for all sorts of expensive, but damning reports, and have indisputable, laughable photos of it all...
If we could just found out who his insurer is. the solicitor said we can bypass him and all his shinanigans, as the insurer would look over our evidence and know they are screwed, and would settle with us, without all the rubbish we are going to have to deal with with the builder.
He is one of those guys who wouldn't spend a penny on a solicitor, but gets a debt collector to chase the disputed debt instead .

I have asked for his insurance certificate when he started the job, but kept getting fobbed off, and now obviously, he will not furnish it at all, but we are sure he was insured, as he was on the housing dept list of builders until recently and would have had to have insurance for that.

thanks for your time...

Comments

  • Quentin
    Quentin Posts: 40,405 Forumite
    Your solicitor should know how to deal with this issue (eg by issuing a claim against the builder, which would get passed to his insurer to deal with).


    Maybe the problem is the possibility he was uninsured - and couldn't pay the damages himself, meaning you are wasting more money on a solicitor.


    (There seems no point the builder refusing to show you his insurance details when you asked prior to the work starting were he insured)
  • If you are paying for a solicitor why arent they fielding this question for you?

    There is no national registry of this type of liability insurance and so there is no way of finding out short of a court ordering him to tell you
  • rs65
    rs65 Posts: 5,682
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    If it's bad workmanship, will he be insured for it?
  • The solicitor said that there is no way of finding out a builders insurer short of him telling you, as someone here mentioned, theres in no register...and the builder won't even engage his own solicitor to deal with ours, rather trying to get a debt collector to chase a disputed debt.
    He is not the sort, if he does have insurance, to hand over the insurers name,just to make things difficult.
    I was just hoping that there may be some simpler way to possibly find out, than to have to take him to court just to get him to reveal it.
    I personally don't have enough knowledge of what builders insurance does and doesn't cover to know the answer to that one, but the solicitor believes from the reports and photos he's seen, that the guy doesnt have a leg to stand on, and in other cases he has dealt with , the insurance company is usually very keen to settle it because if it went to court they could be up for a fortune once you include both sides court costs...
    Would the housing dept, that had him on the register be able to tell us who his insurer is?
    He's an absolute cowboy and the housing dept struck him off their list once they saw photos of what he had done to our listed property from conservation!
  • rs65
    rs65 Posts: 5,682
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    The housing dept might tell you but they probably shouldn't. If he has business premises then he may have an Employers Liability Insurance certificate on display.

    The solicitor could be right that he doesn't have a leg to stand on but whether he has insurance to fund your issues is a different matter. Ask the solicitor what type of policy he wants to pursue.
  • wannahouse
    wannahouse Posts: 372
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    edited 18 January 2016 at 11:09PM
    Quentin wrote: »
    Your solicitor should know how to deal with this issue (eg by issuing a claim against the builder, which would get passed to his insurer to deal with).


    Maybe the problem is the possibility he was uninsured - and couldn't pay the damages himself, meaning you are wasting more money on a solicitor.


    (There seems no point the builder refusing to show you his insurance details when you asked prior to the work starting were he insured)

    We have no choice but to pay a solicitor and get all the experts reports anyway, as he wants a further £18,000 from us, which he has now inflated to £21,000 and we believe, along with everyone that has surveyed his work, and the conservation dept, that the value of his work is nil,and infact he owes US money,from what we have already paid to cover the damages, as everything was done incorrectly, alot of the specified work was not actually done, and he has left the roof in a worse condition than it was in before it was "renovated" , the septic tank is void of warranty as incorrectly installed, and likely to collapse as it was only back filled with dirt, and not concrete or even pea gravel as required by the manufacturer...there is a whole host of things i could bore you with, but will spare you, but at the end of the day, he's a cowboy- he thinks he can bully us into paying by getting a debt collector onto us, which he should not do as he knows it is a disputed debt...
    he can only recover money if he has a judgement against us, and he would be an utter fool to take us to court, as he will end up deeply out of pocket...

    so, we have to engage the solicitor to make our case that we are not "non payers" as he has spread around the place, and that we have a legitimate claim against him, as he is insistent he wants his money!

    As a side note, because of the horrendous work done to our house, it has now been upgraded on the risk register by CADW, and is listed from vulnerable to AT RISK!:(
    so much for paying alot of money to have improvements done...
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