Legal rights with builder?

pondhouse

Any legal advice would be very welcome please as I am sick with worry.

We bought a house 10 years ago with the intention of developing it. It was a 2,700 sq foot farmhouse on 30 acres
We had a builder in mind whose work we had seen and had been vouched for (although we were cautioned he was expensive and had a reputation for being difficult)
He even joined us on the first viewing and so has been on the journey with us until we secured planning and funds to develop the house, so a trust had been built up over time
Our intention was to renovate the house with reclaimed materials, removing some elevations and replace them with others
This would increase the size of the house to approx 4,000 square feet and we were told to budget £700K for a 9-12 month build.
We discussed contracts and the builder said it would be more economical for us to work on a time and materials basis without a contract (I know in hindsight, it was massively foolish to be so trusting)
Fast forward and we have now spent £1.2m and the house remains with few windows, no boiler, radiators, structural work outstanding and drainage to complete, no bathrooms, flooring (no screen in half the ground floor yet, no kitchen etc. Roof is on and nearly complete and most of the first floor windows are in.
This has led to a number of confrontations and their claim that the house is actually 5500 square feet (it definitely is not) and that this is way bigger than originally planned.  
We have asked repeatedly for months for a figure to completion and they still won’t respond. We have paid £180K in invoices in the last 8 weeks alone.
My family have now lived in a caravan on-site for 18 months. I am trying to get a 2nd mortgage and will likely fail as the house is not habitable. I have had to cash in my pension early (still 5 years from retirement) just to keep us afloat.
I would stress that the house is good quality (reclaimed bricks, handmade roof tiles, etc) but there are no second fix fittings anywhere yet, so this is not where the cost has gone. It has gone on building materials and labour.
They have shyed away from giving us estimates even when pressed to do so for months. As an example, they indicated on a spreadsheet £8K to put up weatherboarding on several elevations. So far, they have charged £15K and it is not complete.
I am between a rock and a hard place. I need to keep paying to get the house complete so I can get my family out of a caravan but it is crippling my future and I will likely have to sell the house at the end of the build and, I suspect, will have made no money from the ordeal and make have to take a big loss. He is threatening to walk every time I question their budgeting (and the confrontations are getting increasingly heated).

I wonder whether it is too late to appoint a Quantity Surveyor to go over their past invoices and determine whether I have had fair value. It certainly does not seem like I have. So far, we’ve paid the equivalent (including VAT) of over £3,100 per square metre on a renovation of a house which is far from complete. Do I have any right to take legal action given the absence of a contract? Could I retrospectively get a time and materials contract signed so I have some recourse?

I understand that there will be many who will find it difficult to sympathise with my plight given the sums involved and my naivety (“a fool and his money” etc…..). I accept this criticism entirely but I hope you’ll be kind and offer constructive criticism that can help my family and I carve a way forward.

Thanks for your consideration

tacpot12

I'm sorry to hear about the problems you are having. You have asked for legal advice, but not many of the forum will be qualified to give you advice. If you have insurance on the building, check to see if you have any Legal Expenses cover as part of this, and if so, call the legal helpline provided by your insurer. 

Even in the absence of a written contract, I beleive that the builder still has to use their professional skill to complete work in reasonable time and to a reasonable cost. (This is covered by consumer regulations). But it's a open question as to what is reasonable. The cost of materials will be easier to judge than the cost/time spent fitting and installing them. 

I don't think it will be fruitful to go back over previous invoices unless you feel you have been massively overcharged. You might focus on a small area where the builder has had used a lot of labour to see if there is any indication of massive overcharging. 

The cost of building materials has gone up substantially over the past two years, and even some professionals have been caught out by price rises. A formal contract would have gone some way to protecting both parties. Using an Escrow service would also have provided some protection, but there is no point being wise after the event.

I think you would benefit from a mediation service, in order to take some heat out of the discussion and to help the builder realise that they have to change their approach somewhat. GIven how much you have spent with them, I think they should be giving you some free time in form of preparing some proper estimates and a plan for the order of the remaining major works. However, if they haven't provided a figure for completion, they might not engage with mediation, since the result will be to provide more financial certainty for your  - but you should stress that the outcome isn't fixed - the purpose of mediation is to find an route out of the situation that both parties are comfortable with. They will be worried that if they provide more financial certainty for you, they will have less financial certainty for them, and they probably feel they can't cope with less certtainty. If you can't cope with the current level of uncertainty (and I can imaging that you can't), you are stuck at an impasse. It would probably be better to sell now to a property developer that can complete the dream.

If they won't engage in mediation to find a route out of the situation, then you have a choice; either kick them off site or continue to pour money into the moneypit. You will need to decide if you want to engage a solicitor to defend against their claims payment, or whether you will just pay them what they ask to get rid of them.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Hello OP

Given the figures you might be best off with professional advice, usually issues with builders on here are a few thousand, given you are talking half a million over and not finished yet the expense of talking to a professional should be relatively small in the grand scheme  

Aylesbury_Duck

I agree, the sums involved make getting proper legal advice a must.  This is way beyond what a bunch of semi-informed and largely unqualified strangers on a public forum can help with.

HHarry

If you had said you were finished at £3,100 a square metre I’d have said let it go, but that is a crazy amount to not be at 2nd fix (unless you have some sriously special foundations, steel or glasswork).

But any resolution is almost certainly going to see this Builder disappearing, with the associated cost & hassle of finding someone else - I wish I could offer a positive solution.