Our Builder has gone bankrupt

Brize

I'm really sorry to hear this but it's a story as old as the hills - treating builders and trades with the utmost wariness is a prudent rule for life.

We recently stayed in a windmill in Holland and there was a history of the place in the guestbook. During the build there were apparently terrible problems with the builders - they threatened violence to the owner and a lot of the sub-standard work had to be re-done by new contractors. This was in 1734.

robgilmo

Dominic said:

robgilmo said:

BillDL said:

SPECTRUM001 said:

..........
The other thing we need is our Buildings Regs, Electrical and Gas Safe certs - which I would imagine he cannot provide as he is not trading anymore.

It is probable that the electrician(s) and gas installers used by the company are contracted and, given that they have to pay themselves to keep their "codes" up to date, they MAY still be able to sign off on the work they did if you can find them and ask.

Cant a building inspector sign it all off?

No

A lot of the work I did was signed off by BC.

SPECTRUM001

Thanks again Chaps - it is very helpful to read the varying opinions.

I have spoken to a couple of local companies who know what’s going on, and who have been offering advice too. They all seem to say the same thing, which is to ensure we change the locks asap (our builder has keys) and not let him on our property.

Apparently the fact he didn’t have the courtesy to call me (he simply emailed a sob story) is a sign he doesn’t care about us. So I need to be wary of any dirty tricks.

I have been advised to audit the job so far and work out how much we are owed, so I have a negotiation point for when he wants his scaffolding back. Whilst we need the £££, I am not sure whether I fancy picking an argument though. He and his scaffolders are pretty formidable and intimidating. I am also going back to Nashville shortly, and don’t feel comfortable leaving Mrs001 alone if there’s any nasty stuff going on.

Positively, one of the firms I’ve contacted have offered to help - with short term plans and then to start work in three months, and also check the trades, make any tweaks and issue certificates. I can handle that, as at least it is a plan.

Reckon we will be about £10k down, so will have to assess (expect to see my vintage Mustang in the classifieds). Not happy at all, but health and my goddess wife always come first (fnarr fnarr).

Dominic

You're not getting it ;
The scaffold does not belong to the builder ........it belongs to the Liquidator as does title to any property ,vehicle,tool,material or intellectual property , money in bank etc etc etc 
How can you be 10k down ?......were you paying in advance ? If so lodge your claim with the liquidator asap.
Formidable and intimidating people ????.....There's nobody who isn't subject to the Law .I deal with big and intimidating manual workers every day and the majority are complete pussies ......I had a huge power-lifter guy doing some work in my house while I was doing some emails from behind the kitchen table .......he liked to throw his weight around with some of the other builders.....he was about 30 and I was about 52 at the time .I told him off for not using a dust sheet and he made a comment under his breath I didn't like ........I jumped around the table shouting " I'll fucking kill you Daniel " and went for him in a fury of anger ......he ran out the door ,down the hall with me chasing him ,up the stairs and locked himself in the bathroom shouting 'please calm down,sorry ' from the other side of the door......when I started to kick the door down he dialled the police from his mobile crying like a baby.Conversely , I had a small argument 30 years ago with 2 Vietnamese brothel operators in a next door building in Camden Town over a shared drain (they were about 4 foot tall ) .....it came to nothing after 2 minutes and they walked off as did I. The next morning one of them jumped out of a car as I was unlocking the door and stabbed me in the shoulder /top of arm from behind and ran off.......I'm sure he intended to stab me in the back of the neck and I just happened to move by chance.I had absolutely no idea that was coming .
Just because they are a bit gruff,don't let that bother you......believe me ,they get bullied by their wives who take charge of their wages and give them back some beer money just like 90% of builders !

abw1989

Dominic said:

You're not getting it ;
The scaffold does not belong to the builder ........it belongs to the Liquidator as does title to any property ,vehicle,tool,material or intellectual property , money in bank etc etc etc 
How can you be 10k down ?......were you paying in advance ? If so lodge your claim with the liquidator asap.
Formidable and intimidating people ????.....There's nobody who isn't subject to the Law .I deal with big and intimidating manual workers every day and the majority are complete pussies ......I had a huge power-lifter guy doing some work in my house while I was doing some emails from behind the kitchen table .......he liked to throw his weight around with some of the other builders.....he was about 30 and I was about 52 at the time .I told him off for not using a dust sheet and he made a comment under his breath I didn't like ........I jumped around the table shouting " I'll fucking kill you Daniel " and went for him in a fury of anger ......he ran out the door ,down the hall with me chasing him ,up the stairs and locked himself in the bathroom shouting 'please calm down,sorry ' from the other side of the door......when I started to kick the door down he dialled the police from his mobile crying like a baby.Conversely , I had a small argument 30 years ago with 2 Vietnamese brothel operators in a next door building in Camden Town over a shared drain (they were about 4 foot tall ) .....it came to nothing after 2 minutes and they walked off as did I. The next morning one of them jumped out of a car as I was unlocking the door and stabbed me in the shoulder /top of arm from behind and ran off.......I'm sure he intended to stab me in the back of the neck and I just happened to move by chance.I had absolutely no idea that was coming .
Just because they are a bit gruff,don't let that bother you......believe me ,they get bullied by their wives who take charge of their wages and give them back some beer money just like 90% of builders !

u k hun?

CHRISB50

^cool story 

Sporky

Yeah, but I'm going to Elevenerife. 

mrkb

Sporky said:

Yeah, but I'm going to Elevenerife. 

Lol, We used to say “chinney reckon”

TeleMaster

My friend had an extension job booked so they could have extra room to start a family. He paid them like a lot of money for the materials, all this other stuff and the guys life just fell apart and he went bankrupt and lost everything. He basically had to write all this money all off and start again. He's a nurse, his wife a teacher. They're doing okay but not exactly minted. It's tragic. 

Hattigol

Dominic said:

You're not getting it ;
The scaffold does not belong to the builder ........it belongs to the Liquidator as does title to any property ,vehicle,tool,material or intellectual property , money in bank etc etc etc 
How can you be 10k down ?......were you paying in advance ? If so lodge your claim with the liquidator asap.
Formidable and intimidating people ????.....There's nobody who isn't subject to the Law .I deal with big and intimidating manual workers every day and the majority are complete pussies ......I had a huge power-lifter guy doing some work in my house while I was doing some emails from behind the kitchen table .......he liked to throw his weight around with some of the other builders.....he was about 30 and I was about 52 at the time .I told him off for not using a dust sheet and he made a comment under his breath I didn't like ........I jumped around the table shouting " I'll fucking kill you Daniel " and went for him in a fury of anger ......he ran out the door ,down the hall with me chasing him ,up the stairs and locked himself in the bathroom shouting 'please calm down,sorry ' from the other side of the door......when I started to kick the door down he dialled the police from his mobile crying like a baby.Conversely , I had a small argument 30 years ago with 2 Vietnamese brothel operators in a next door building in Camden Town over a shared drain (they were about 4 foot tall ) .....it came to nothing after 2 minutes and they walked off as did I. The next morning one of them jumped out of a car as I was unlocking the door and stabbed me in the shoulder /top of arm from behind and ran off.......I'm sure he intended to stab me in the back of the neck and I just happened to move by chance.I had absolutely no idea that was coming .
Just because they are a bit gruff,don't let that bother you......believe me ,they get bullied by their wives who take charge of their wages and give them back some beer money just like 90% of builders !

And tonight Matthew, I'm going to be @CavemanGrogg ;

Danny1969

You might find the scaffold is hired, when I was in the game we had our own alloy towers and lightweights but the scaffold was always hired and erected by scaffold firms, as you have to be qualified to build scaffold. 
Some of the tools might be hired too, not the basic tools but expensive things you rarely need like large diameter hole cutters and such are generally cheaper to hire than buy. 

What about finishing the job yourself. There's not much you can't do yourself with a bit of learning and determination.  

jonnyburgo

Dominic said:

You're not getting it ;
The scaffold does not belong to the builder ........it belongs to the Liquidator as does title to any property ,vehicle,tool,material or intellectual property , money in bank etc etc etc 
How can you be 10k down ?......were you paying in advance ? If so lodge your claim with the liquidator asap.
Formidable and intimidating people ????.....There's nobody who isn't subject to the Law .I deal with big and intimidating manual workers every day and the majority are complete pussies ......I had a huge power-lifter guy doing some work in my house while I was doing some emails from behind the kitchen table .......he liked to throw his weight around with some of the other builders.....he was about 30 and I was about 52 at the time .I told him off for not using a dust sheet and he made a comment under his breath I didn't like ........I jumped around the table shouting " I'll fucking kill you Daniel " and went for him in a fury of anger ......he ran out the door ,down the hall with me chasing him ,up the stairs and locked himself in the bathroom shouting 'please calm down,sorry ' from the other side of the door......when I started to kick the door down he dialled the police from his mobile crying like a baby.Conversely , I had a small argument 30 years ago with 2 Vietnamese brothel operators in a next door building in Camden Town over a shared drain (they were about 4 foot tall ) .....it came to nothing after 2 minutes and they walked off as did I. The next morning one of them jumped out of a car as I was unlocking the door and stabbed me in the shoulder /top of arm from behind and ran off.......I'm sure he intended to stab me in the back of the neck and I just happened to move by chance.I had absolutely no idea that was coming .
Just because they are a bit gruff,don't let that bother you......believe me ,they get bullied by their wives who take charge of their wages and give them back some beer money just like 90% of builders !

Is this one of those posts that ends with waking up in the morning to find that you've strangled your wife?

Rob1742

I agree on the points mentioned on scaffolding. More than likely hired as that is the usual process.

So at some point soon the scaffolders will just come and take it back.

Cant see you stopping that happening as it’s nothing to do with the liquidator. The builder does not own it and so the liquidator wouldn’t look to include that in the builders accounts. 

Dominic

I thought I saw the OP said it was the builder's own plant.
We had a situation some time ago where a scaffolding was left on 4 storeys of a building in London .....builder had gone bust and scaffold company hadn't been paid . When we asked them nicely to remove it as the works were very close to finish they started being uncooperative and trying to be clever about it.......
"Someone's gotta pay mate ....'cos it's staying there til were paid .......understand about builder but you'll have to pay if you want it off your building ......get us the £4000 and we'll take it down "
They were pretty nasty ......I offered to pay them a small amount for an easy life and was told to Fuck off .
Next day , I loosened some of the cleats on the legers and removed some of the Monaflex then phoned the Borough Engineers Office with my concerns about the unstable and potentially dangerous scaffold . They had somebody there within a few hours ,contacted the scaffolders (whose board was on the front ) ......it was taken down the next day.
Sadly not without damage to some York Slabs where they dropped the clips from a height but £300 of slab replacement was better than paying them.

Hattigol

Dominic said:

I thought I saw the OP said it was the builder's own plant.
We had a situation some time ago where a scaffolding was left on 4 storeys of a building in London .....builder had gone bust and scaffold company hadn't been paid . When we asked them nicely to remove it as the works were very close to finish they started being uncooperative and trying to be clever about it.......
"Someone's gotta pay mate ....'cos it's staying there til were paid .......understand about builder but you'll have to pay if you want it off your building ......get us the £4000 and we'll take it down "
They were pretty nasty ......I offered to pay them a small amount for an easy life and was told to Fuck off .
Next day , I loosened some of the cleats on the legers and removed some of the Monaflex then phoned the Borough Engineers Office with my concerns about the unstable and potentially dangerous scaffold . They had somebody there within a few hours ,contacted the scaffolders (whose board was on the front ) ......it was taken down the next day.
Sadly not without damage to some York Slabs where they dropped the clips from a height but £300 of slab replacement was better than paying them.

I thought this was going to end with you flying from the top of the scaffolding and simultaneously karate-kicking at least two directors of the company in the head.

Bit disappointing, to be fair. 

NelsonP

Check old the builder on companies house. Are the directors associated with other companies? Have any of those been liquidated?

the_jaffa

I think Dominic must have a fiveskin

Kittyfrisk

the_jaffa said:

I think Dominic must have a fiveskin

From previous conversations relating to background & religion, I'd say that's unlikely 

CavemanGrogg

I don't know why I've been tagged into this, my grand strategy for dealing with builders or anybody I've had do work for me is to ply them with tea/coffee and biscuits, not go all Chuck Norris on them - does anybody honestly think a self admitted tea jenny who beach combs and goes metal detecting is even capable of going all Chuck Norris on anybody in the first place.

As to what to do, in an ideal world, the OP's builder should have insurance to cover such an event.  If the builder doesn't hopefully the OP will be covered under one form of their insurance policies.  I would strongly adviser against keeping any of the builder's tools, no matter what they are.  As for the scaffolding - this will most likely not be owned by the builder, I would give the builder a reasonable amount of time to let the OP know what's happening or remove any and all scaffolding that's not load bearing, before contacting the builder, to have it removed, if the builder ghosts the OP , I would strongly advise that the OP gets in contact with the company that does own the scaffolding, and get them to remove it ASAP, this can actually be quite hard and time consuming to do as most scaffolding firms don't actually have the physical space to store all of the scaffolding they own, and rely on scaffolding being out not just for income, but also due to storage space.

Hopefully the OP was paying for materials, which he should have on site, and progress based payments, and didn't pay for everything upfront.  Even in an ideal situation with the builder being fully insured, unfortunately there is no way that anybody in the situation the OP is in will not take some kind of financial loss.

duotone

SPECTRUM001 said:

With regard to the scaffolding, it does actually belong to the builder as he had a scaffold wing to the business.