Claims against builders are on the rise as more of us are choosing to undertake home improvements over expensive house moves. As money has often been paid upfront, homeowners can find themselves in a difficult dilemma when things go wrong; either carry on with an unsatisfactory builder or face more costs and time delays in finding a replacement.
Worse, defective work may not initially be apparent and may surface years later. If your builder has failed to carry out a reasonable job, then you may be entitled to compensation. We can help if your claim has arisen in the last six years, except in limited cases where there has been latent (hidden) damage.
What Should I Consider?
The question as to whether your builder can afford to compensate you is important when considering a claim. It is unlikely that your builder has professional indemnity insurance to meet any claim for bad workmanship or further negligence/breaches of contract that may have occurred.
It is very difficult to discover any meaningful information about the financial substance of the other party. In cases where it is unclear whether the other party can afford to pay you if you win, we are unable to offer a No Win No Fee agreement. If the physical state of the building works has changed since the works were carried out, this may be problematic in suing a builder and proving your claim. This is because evidence may have been affected.
In most building cases, there will be a need for an expert report from a building surveyor. We are able to arrange this for you. The cost of it falls outside any No Win No Fee agreement. Depending upon the value of your claim and the court track which it is allocated to, you may be able to recover this cost from the other party.
Case Study
Mr. G. engaged a builder to carry out a large-scale renovation of his home, including building extensions to it. Problems such as bad craftsmanship, damaging the owner’s furniture and belongings, removing valuable planting, dumping waste in the garden, breaches of Building Regulations and not keeping to agreed budgets and delays occurred almost from the outset. Eventually, the relationship between the builder and the client broke down to the extent that the project came to a halt.
The builder’s response was to claim that the contract was between our client and the builder’s limited company. That would have been problematic for Mr. G. because the building company was put into liquidation. We were able to establish that the builder had personal liability, which meant that it was financially viable to pursue a professional negligence claim.
After experts’ opinion in support of the claim had been obtained and a spreadsheet of defects, overpayments and costs of rectification works was drafted, proceedings were issued against the builder to claim not only for the costs of putting the bad work right, but also to cover Mr. G.’s other financial losses.
