Damaged driveway by Kier who absolving themselves of blame

Lukey25

Earlier this year Kier were contracted to work on groundworks on a electricity unit next to our house. During this works one of the contractors asked if they could park a vehicle on the driveway quote "as the digger would be swinging around a lot and they didn't want to cause any damage to either our cars or garage". My wife accepted this without any real thought seeing the vehicles at the time were cars and one van of a transit size.

However, my wife left for work and I returned home from work a number of hours later to see this vehicle was actually a lorry heavily laden with soil and hardcore as they excavated next door. When the truck moved it had cracked our gravel resin driveway, very clearly where the truck had been.

I pointed this out to the workers making it very clear I was unhappy with what had happened as we'd never have allowed this given we know the gravel resin driveway is not designed to take this. Clearly wanting to avoid confrontation the supervisor (or so I assume given they all looked at him when I brought up the issue) said not to worry and they'll be in touch to get it fixed. They then completed the work parking the lorry on the pavement rather than our driveway (clearly they'd used our driveway as a shortcut to move the inert material.

After hearing nothing I made a formal complaint to Kier 3 weeks later. Their handler simply came over took some photos before sending an email claimed it was normal wear and tear for a driveway that had been caused by our cars and they absolve themselves of any blame.

The driveway is under warranty for 10 years (we're 5 years into this). Consequently I have contacted the driveway installers who inspected the damage and (correctly) deeming the damage was clearly made by a heavy goods vehicle which is not allowed under the warranty so I'd need to claim the repair from the contractor who made the damage (which apparently is around £1.5k of damage)

So I'm stuck with a severely dented driveway and everyone absolving themselves of blame. I had no photos prior to them causing the damage (only after) but then why would I, I didn't expect them to lie and use our driveway for heavy loading.

Is anyone able to offer any advice at all to me please

missile

Seems you have little alternative but to raise a court action.

Did you take a photo of the lorry on your drive?
Do you have legal cover with your house insurance?

molerat

LBA jointly to both the company responsible for the works, the company that Kier were subcontracted to, and Kier themselves.

Lukey25

Many thanks, I'll look into raising a claim, unfortunately I did not manager to capture the truck on the driveway, I fear I'm just going to have to stump up on this occasion as I don't really have any proof at all other than the damage. One thing is that I will never trust Kier or other companies when they ask permission to put any people/equipment within our property grounds

a.turner

Do you have the registration number of the truck? If so put a claim in against their vehicle insurance.