Builder refusing to communicate or work

RGEARY1981 · 12 April 2024 at 2:56PM

Thanks again everyone.

You are spot on about the imbalance of paying upfront, it's meant he has always had the upper hand. Sadly where we live - Looe, of Beyond Paradise fame - there's a lot of work and not a lot of trades and 40% upfront is not uncommon.

We are looking at claiming on his indemnity insurance but he refuses to provide up to date details.

It's not about getting money back from him now. I know he's skint. I just want to make sure I'm the last victim. I'm 40 and have a good job, I can bounce back but the other couples are in their 70s and he is targeting people like that more and more.

An update from this morning:

HSE visited our house today and condemned his practices, they will be writing to him ordering him back to site to clear up. While they were at our site, we got notified that the builder was working at another site in town - ripping off yet another roof and probably person. The HSE officer immediately went to the second site with my girlfriend. The builder locked himself inside and refused to come out! Eventually my girlfriend - who really isn't scary - had to agree to leave if he would come out to talk to HSE.

HSE since reported him to be uncooperative and have issued him a notice to clear the site and safely dispose of the asbestos tiles he has left all over site unbagged and even stored at height. They have told us that they will prosecute if he doesn't comply by Tuesday.

Not good for our bank balance but helpful in getting this guy shut down and our site safer.

We think our best option is to force him to give up the sitecand then pursue for theft rather than an expensive civil court action given his finances. Then we can move on with a new firm.

Thanks again for the advice. It looks like the Construction Act 2015 will be our friend.

RGEARY1981 · 10 November 2024 at 10:39AM

Update:

This tale unfortunately got a lot worse before it started to get better.

The builder refused to cooperate or mediate in any way. Trading Standards are pursuing him for 5 cases and over £500,000 of shoddy work in the area.

He is claiming to have suffered a mental breakdown but we have strong evidence of a cocaine addiction that started in lockdown and spiralled between our first meetings with him and the work starting.

The work he had completed failed building regulations and had to be removed.

We have had to engage a new builder and pay £120,000 to remove and build in accordance with building regs and our planning permission. We are now watertight again and the house will be mortgageable again in a month. We have £80k in debt to family and will need to get a mortgage to repay that and finish the decoration etc.

I am starting a new thread under mortgages to get some advice and share my experiences with renovation finance - an absolute minefield.

We have been through hell with this but are coming out the other side slowly. We've learnt an awful lot about how the law works and the desperate need for regulation of the building trade. This guy was Federation of Master Builder accredited, checkatrade accredited and had recommended by our architect, structural engineer and building control but things change and people change very quickly. We should have bailed out much earlier but hindsight is easy and you make bad decisions when your house is in ruins.

Thanks for the advice in the thread