Builder deserted us - what to do about scaffolding?

[DesperateHouseknife]

I've been unable to contact our builder for 2 weeks now. He has been very unreliable throughout the job, only showing up when it suited him, with an endless stream of excuses. His mother has died twice now, which is a bit of a give-away...

The job is 95% done but with some tricky tasks left which he has obviously decided he can't be bothered to do. Fine. These things happen. We've learnt a few lessons but we are not out of pocket.

We have scaffolding on one side of the house which he organised. I don't know which company supplied the scaffold and there are no markings. Any ideas what we should do about the scaffolding? I want it gone. If it was the builder's then it would be on ebay or down the tip already, but it belongs to somebody and it's not their fault that our builder is a conman.

Ring round some local scaffolding companies and see if they know the builder? Did you see them put it up?

Ring the builder and say he has 24 hours to tell you who the scaffolding belongs to or you will start ringing round local companies and offering it free to whoever wants to take it.

We had a 11 house site and kicked the builder off site. He left his cabins on a field next to the site (leased from the farmer) and never responded to moving them so eventually we asked the farmer to store them elsewhere. He sold them and now we face litigation running at £20K +

I would suggest that you employ another scaffold company to dismount the scaffold and return it to him ( dump it on his driveway). Thrn you can't be accused of theft.

You could also call the HSE and complain because scaffold needs to be inspected once a week and this is recorded by scaffold tags clipped to the scaffold and signed each week.