Weeds in newly made lawn

[JumpJockey]

Last year we paid a gardener to dig over and level and seed the second half of our garden where there had been a very uneven surface (hard to mow) and lots of weeds, creeping buttercup, etc, and brambles down the side. It now seems clear that he rotavated the top layer and spread it over the whole area to make the flat surface - there are lots and lots of tiny brambles sprouting and bindweed and so on growing across the whole area, which never used to be the case. I spent an hour yesterday pulling up brambles growing from the bits of root that had got spread everywhere along with all the other pernicious weeds we had been trying to get rid of...

Is this something you'd expect? Should he have taken off most of the crap and used new topsoil rather than the old weed-ridden stuff? Is there anything we can do other than weedkiller to try and get it under control?