Sunny days building services

winklepicker

Looking for anyone who has had some work recently or in the last 5 years by sunny days. I see a lot of posts on here and I too have been the victim of the cowboy builders has anyone taken them to court ? I have reported to trading standards. The maid a patio for me which is an awful mess and causing damp as against building regs and refuse to rectify it. It’s a long story but heart breaking 

Aylesbury_Duck

Have you spoken to your home insurance provider for advice?  If the work is causing damp, you should inform them.

tacpot12

It's definitely worth speaking to the Legal Helpline provided by your insurer if you have Legal Expenses cover. You also need to tell your Insurer's customer service line about the damp.

The problem with taking cowboy builders to court seems to be getting paid. The true cowboys are wise about the ways of avoiding payment, so you might need to get sneaky, e.g. using private investigators to find where they live or what they have changed their name to.

tacpot12

If they have put their refusal to rectify the problem into print, ideally a letter, you should be able to get another firm to rectify the problem, and charge them for the work. It's not ideal, because the work will be expensive, but you don't want to have a damp problem any longer than necessary (even though we are approaching Spring/Summer). 

You are also under an obligation to minimise your losses, and if you pay for the remediation, the courts understand that this acts as incentive for you to get the job done (properly) at the lowest cost. You should have less problems recovering the costs if you have paid out an obviously reasonable sum for remediation. 

If this were to get as far as court, you would need an expert witness to confirm what they had done wrong. If you can engage AJMcCormack from Homepage (pavingexpert.com) as your expert witness that would be good. (I've no idea if he does expert witness work, but he certainly has the credentials to do so.)