Suing our builders

[SammyWhiskers]

We bought a new build property in September 2013 and moved in in December. When we moved in the underfloor heating was not working, the sheds were no built along with other snags they still had to finish. Since then we have had hardly any luck getting in touch with the builders to finish the work to the house. They have confirmed that the kitchen floor will all need to be taken up to fix the underfloor heating, but fail to ever commit to a date to do the work. Now they ignore any of our efforts to get in contact with them.

 

We have all the email correspondence saved including them admitting that they need to complete the snags.

 

Our solicitor is useless too and apart from ask their solicitor to get the builders to do the work, is really doing nothing.

 

Where do we go from here in terms of getting the work finished. Is suing them a fairly easy process or will it be long and very costly for us, in which case it may be better for us to swallow the cost and pay for all the work ourselfs.

 

Any help very much appreciated.

[BankFodder]

Your complaint here should be against the people who sold you the house. Is that the builders?

 

Didn't you know that some of this work was unfinished before you bought it? Any reasonable solicitor would then have made sure that there was a retention on the purchase price. A retention means that some money is held back by the solicitor and is only paid out on condition that the work is completed or brought up to scratch.

 

Yes you can certainly bring a claim in the County Court and making a County Court claim is not at all complicated but you need to do some basic work and some basic reading around.

 

The most important thing to begin with is to get a complete list of the work that needs to be done and to get to independent quotations for it.

 

You would then send the two independent quotations to the original builders/developers and tell them that if they do not complete the work within a certain number of weeks, that you will put the work in hand yourself and you will be suing them for the cost of it. One thing to be aware of though is that some of these building firms can simply go out of business and if that happens you will not be able to enforce the judgment.

[sick.as.a.chip]

Was it a big builder or small builder? Did you get any warranty from someone like the NHBC? They normally provide structural warranty for the major homebuilders. What sort of snag's do you mean?

[f16]

If you have a warranty from NHBC . That would cover structural faults for 10 years.

 

What you have mentioned in post #1 I don't think is covered by NHBC.

Does any of the under floor heating work ?

 

Could be loads of things:

1. Standard 15/50 pump instead of a high head 15/60

2. Incorrect "balancing" on the manifold.

The list is endless. ....

I agree with BankFodder and sick.as.a.chip. Make a list and the more information the better.