So, in July last year, this went up next door in a bit of a hurry, while all the internal walls etc of the existing build were knocked out.
 
Like I said earlier, no notice or communication given, they just cracked on at a mad pace, they also knocked half the roof out for a dormer conversion at the same time.
Putting that scaffolding on top of the extension seemed a brave move. They actually did that after most of the roof work had been done without any, just dudes climbing around a building. When the builder got wind we were looking at it and complaining about things they slapped some render up quick to try and hide the dodgy unsafe blockwork. More knowledgable people saw my photos and tell me they're a wrong type of block as well, there's just an awful lot wrong with the thing. Yes the heights of the opening are uneven. The roof is apparently just celotex insulation sat on uneven boards, it's very odd. We tracked down the managing agency who were extremely evasive and outright lying about stuff, lots of weasel people involved, we also contacted the council. Building Control at the council washed their hands of it entirely because the agents had engaged an independent building control company to review the work - so we spoke to them as well. They wouldn't tell us much ("data protection"), said they were on top of it and all is fine, but at first were unaware the work had even started so big suspicions about them as well, can quite well imagine they'd look the other way for problems in exchange for money. The council did say to keep an eye on any breaches of the terms of the HMO licence, so I suppose that's one for the future. Tina had spoken to the builder a few times, initially as a "oh, hello, what's happening here then?" and then more of a "what the fuck are you actually doing and who's in charge" kind of a way. They were weaselly liars about what was happening, as well as entirely dismissive/insulting about the impact it was all having on the neighbours either side. The owner of the house on the other side is a local landlord so he had a few connections as well, seems like a nice enough bloke and we kind of teamed up to work on it. The managing agency sent a minion to talk to us all, who acted like it was all a big shock and news to him that the building had been done this way, and "we always have party wall agreements in place first" and blah blah... except that I worked out his personal email address was included in our initial "what are you actually doing here" emails from weeks before so yep, weasels all the way down.
At some point in all this some men from oop North came to inspect it, evidently further up the chain to the owner company (a slum landlord property company a provider of low cost social housing). Tina popped out to say hi and they were absolutely slating the build, all the things we'd spotted and more besides. Belatedly, a surveyor gets in touch with us and we end up with a surveyor at their expense for a retrospective party wall agreement of some kind - this is essentially useless legally since the notifiable works had all been done but we did get a couple of hundred quid compensation for minor plaster cracks caused by their internal demolition work.
Then this happened:
 
haha! They even ended up drilling out all of the concrete foundation works. The roof and scaffolding were just being held up on those temporary supports for a bit. The builder looked rather sad. I almost felt sorry for him - no doubt he's not going to be getting paid for all this extra work - but well, he was a fucking arsehole, so I don't. Then they built it again a bit more properly:
 
I still don't know what the hell's going on with that roof but at least the blockwork is a bit more evenly spaced, and so on.
This was all back in August. They haven't been back since apart from one visit. The upstairs windows have been open to the elements and wildlife all winter and the gardens are a mess. The northern inspectors came back a few months later, and I overheard them telling someone outside "Honestly, I'm surprised the guy still works for you" but that's about it. Presumably they'll restart works again sooner or later, or maybe not! I hope we don't need to sell our place while it's all going on still! Also, I really hope we cost the slum landlord people some time/energy/money in all of this. |
