We live in a semi and we just bought the house next door. Eventual plan is to knock through into one house. The other house had rotten roof lining that came up on the survey which needed replacing as a matter of priority. Included in the quote we got was replacing the roof lining on the other side of the house, taking the moss off our roof as well as next door and cleaning out the gutters of both houses.
The roofers started on Monday and started jet washing moss off the roof. When they started our side of the house we noticed water gushing into out daughter's bedroom and discovered that they had been jet washing with a powerful washer upwards under the tiles and created a hole in our roof lining, hence the water.
We told them to stop as soon as we saw the water and left her room to dry out.
They knew the roof lining was totally rotten and non-existent on the other side of the house as they were being paid to replace it. However, I learned today that they did the jet washing on that side of the house before they replaced the lining and water had soaked into the ceilings of all the bedrooms on that side of the house. They did not inform us of this but clearly knew about this because they had moved some of the furniture that had been left in those rooms and removed a light fitting as a result of the water ingress. The rooms now smell of damp and the plasterboard is falling off the ceilings.
In addition to this, they have put a foot through the ceiling of one of the other rooms and are not proposing to do anything except trim a piece of plasterboard and stick it up where they have created the hole using some tape, because 'well, love, you'll be getting the ceilings reskimmed at some point anyway'.
Where do we stand on withholding payment until we've got a quote from someone else for putting fresh plasterboard up and reskimming the ceilings and then withholding that cost from their payment?