Damage to property caused by other contractors

sr4a

I own my house. 
A housing Association hired contractors to repair one of their property in my street.
The scaffolding company when dropping off and collecting their equipment piled it against my house damaging my roughcast even though my wife was at home at the time and asked them if they could put it elsewhere on the pavement.
They just laughed at her and ignored her.
I had to have the roughcast repaired 18 months ago as it was showing its age now I will have to have it repaired again because of this.
I emailed the housing association to raise a complaint and ask for costs to repair so far they have just ignored me.
Do I go to a solicitor to seek advice on what to do next or do I raise a small claims action?
I read online that this can also be classed as intentional damage in Scotland and can be reported to the Police?
I'm not going to claim on my buildings insurance as if I recover costs from HA this will probably increase my next years premium so why should I be penalised.
Any advice from the forum would be much appreciated.

Below are some of the pics my son took during the works and some of the damage to my wall.

Brie

small claims court?

Section62

sr4a said:

I own my house. 
A housing Association hired contractors to repair one of their property in my street.
The scaffolding company when dropping off and collecting their equipment piled it against my house damaging my roughcast even though my wife was at home at the time and asked them if they could put it elsewhere on the pavement.
They just laughed at her and ignored her.
I had to have the roughcast repaired 18 months ago as it was showing its age now I will have to have it repaired again because of this.
I emailed the housing association to raise a complaint and ask for costs to repair so far they have just ignored me.
Do I go to a solicitor to seek advice on what to do next or do I raise a small claims action?
I read online that this can also be classed as intentional damage in Scotland and can be reported to the Police?
I'm not going to claim on my buildings insurance as if I recover costs from HA this will probably increase my next years premium so why should I be penalised.
Any advice from the forum would be much appreciated.

Below are some of the pics my son took during the works and some of the damage to my wall.

Find out what their formal complaints process is and follow it - they will have standard response times and if you aren't happy with their response you can escalate - ultimately to whichever ombudsman is appropriate to the situation (their complaints process will explain this to you).

Don't spend money on 'legal' claims until you've exhausted the free complaints/ombudsman route.

In your complaint mention the inappropriate response to your wife by the workers, and also their delay in responding/not acknowledging your complaint - failure to follow their own complaints process is a ground for complaining by itself.

Albermarle

Have you costed the work needed to repair the damage? As a guess it would not be very much as it looks pretty superficial. 
You need to think about the hassle/cost of complaining/chasing etc against the cost of repairs.
It might stick in the throat but might be easier to just to patch it up and move on, as it is only a one off incident.

HampshireH

If your son sname is that on the photos may be worth removing it.

Formal complaint to HA
Follow process but you may need to claim on their insurance so worth asking for those details

sr4a

Albermarle said:

Have you costed the work needed to repair the damage? As a guess it would not be very much as it looks pretty superficial. 
You need to think about the hassle/cost of complaining/chasing etc against the cost of repairs.
It might stick in the throat but might be easier to just to patch it up and move on, as it is only a one off incident.

Yes thought about just taking it on the chin but it'll still cost me to have it repaired so why should I pay for it plus if they come back to other HA homes to repair /upgrade they may just do the same again and use our house as their equipment unloading/loading bay!

The contractor who roughcasted my wall is coming out this week and I'll see what he recommends. The last thing I want is frost getting into the beading and then eventually the roughcast will spall.
HA has emailed me today after I informed yesterday them that if they didn't reply to my email by end of this week then I would raise a small claims action to recover any costs.
I'll keep you all posted.