Negligent housing developer

americanv8

I moved into a new house on new development in March 2006, we live at the end of the road & our garage is effectively the end. During some very heavy rain that year we discovered that due to the incline in the road all the water runs down to our garage and because there was no field drain infront of it, it just flooded our garage.
Pretty much everything that was on the floor in the garage was ruined, the developer replaced a couple of things and installed a field drain running the length of the garage and put a drain in the corner.
Our street has 2 drains, one half way up and the other is as described at my garage. Earlier this year again after some heavy rain, our garage flooded yet again. Upon inspection i found that the solitary drain in the street was full to the brim with mud. The estate is still a building site due to the housing downturn, so the roads are constantly awash with mud, sand & general building rubbish, the developer has also stopped cleaning the roads when they're finished on a night so everyone on our side of the estate is dragging mud around. Anyway, as we're out of our 1 year warranty with the developer I had to get the girl from the marketing suite to phone out the local drain clearing company (so that i didnt get charged), they came out and mucked out the drain in the street and found it was just a bucket, it had never had the rubber plug pulled out to open it into the drainage pipes!! He couldn't pull the plug out because the drain lining had been installed incorrectly and the plug was half covered with concrete. He came to our drain and again mucked it out, had a bit of a feel around and found the rubber plug, pulled it out & the drain immediately emptied. The developer this time was completely uninterested in my damaged goods so i had no option but to put in a claim with my insurance company & pay the excess. They've been told numerous times about the drain in the street and have done nothing about it.
Last Sunday with the torrential rain we had i suddenly saw that my garage was flooding again, i rushed out and had a look at our drain (the one in the street has never been touched so its full of mud and totally blocked) and it was completely blocked. I had no choice other than to pull the drain cover up and start hand pumping water out, i got to where the pipe exit was in the drain and all the mud and rubbish that has been washing down the road had completely blocked our drain again. My garage flooded, stuff ruined yet again & the surface layer of the garage floor is starting to break up now due to the amount of soaking its had.
If the developer had fixed the drain in the street then I wouldn't be in this position. I've repeatedly phoned them and keep getting told there's nobody available to talk to, i've emailed them & thats been ignored. I've asked for the Customer Care manager who we've dealt with before on several occasions and I cant get to speak to him, tried speaking to the managing director who again is never available. We've reported it to the site manager 3 times & the marketing suite and still it hasn't been fixed. The roads haven't been adopted by the council yet so they're all still under the developers control.
Can anyone tell me if its worth going legal over this? Its complete negligence on their behalf that this keeps happening. I've had damage to goods running into £100's, the garage floor is damaged, i'm a complete stress head when it rains now because basically my drain is the only one in the street that half works! + i've had to spend hours cleaning up & trying to prevent disaster.

neilmcl

It's definitely worth "going legal" as you put it. The developer is clearly responsible for the flooding to your garage as they haven't completed the drainage correctly.

Please get yourself over to a solicitor for advice and also contact your local council's building control dept, they can be very helpful in situations like this and may even send out a building inspector to have a look.

Tozer

Check your home insurance to see if you have a legal expenses section to the policy.

americanv8

I phoned the local council building control who said this particular developer do not use them for submitting their documents, they use a 3rd party instead. They advised i goto NHBC, phoned them up and went through several different departments non of which seemed sure who i needed to be speaking to. Eventually their Technical team logged a case for me but need lots of proof, times, dates, etc for when i've contacted the developer. I'm going to struggle with this since apart from a few emails everything has been done verbally through the lady at the marketing suite since I simply cannot get to speak to someone at their head office. I phoned yesterday for Customer Service and it went to voicemail, phoned the Customer Service Director which also went to the normal CS voicemail, tried the MD ... voicemail. The receptionist is rude & wont entertain any conversation other than "which department"
NHBC didn't seem to think they'd be able to do anything

neilmcl

That's a bit odd, I thought it was the council's building control dept's responsibilty to deal with building regulations issues. Did you mention the fact that the street drainage wasn't connected properly, I don't see how that's an issue for the NHBC. Who is the 3rd party they mentioned?

I'd get back on to them.

You might want to have a look on the council's website to see who deals with drains, it's possible that you may need to report it to the County Council as well as they deal with road issues incl. drains.

Freddie_Snowbits

Rule of thumb No: 1 when buying house.

Do not buy house at bottom of hill.

Freddie_Snowbits

I think you will find that the council may not yet have adopted your road and hence are not responsible!! I think they have up to 13 years to decide if tehy are to adopt it.

In the meantime, the developer is responsible for the raods and maintenance, part of which came out of the price you paid for the house, as well as any by pass the council wanted. See section 108.

Oh, and you get no discount on the rates either because of it, nor any control of parking.

Still, cie la vie.