I have to rant/share with the world the truly awful experience my fiancé and I had with B. Byrne Builders Ltd run by Ben Byrne, who has now closed this company to set up Crown Point Builders Ltd. We've been told we won't get any justice in the courts but I can at least share my story hear to hopefully inform other potential customers/victims.
Not to be too self-pitying, but considering our first builders did lots of structural damage it was an even worse thing for our next builder to come in and do what he did.
We paid Ben to repair the damage the first builder did and complete our house renovation. To be entirely fair to him, it was a big job but one he told us he was more than capable of doing. I wish we hadn't believed him. Ben spent over six months on site, charged us over £130k and made barely any progress. He didn't get Building Control to site to see underpinning (which they then wouldn't sign off) which is a real rookie error. He underpinned our house knowing he wasn't insured for it, he charged us luxury prices but provided the worst service. He basically subcontracted out all the work to contractors and then didn't supervise them. We found out the guy he let build the entire back of our house wonky he had just found on a website and never worked with before. He literally just let him loose on our house without any concern for our property. He also tried to hide or, when when discovered it, lie about poor quality work. Even really basic stuff that was wrong like wonky walls and uneven floors he lied to our faces about.
He barely bothered to come to site himself so he had no clue of the current status on things and we went round in circles for months because of his lack of leadership. He also tried to charge us for work he hadn't done - absolute classic was defending himself for trying to charge for some roof joists that simply were not there...whilst he stood in front of the space they should be. Apparently they'd been cut to size "so most of the work was done already". It turned out even that wasn't true: there was just a pile of planks in another room. (Which then were taken from site when they left). You literally could not make this stuff up.
He then folded the business, avoiding doing our repairs. Not before taking out a £50k bounce back loan (supposedly for repairing our house...which didn't happen so lord knows where that money went) that now he doesn't have to repay because the business went bust.
The injustice of this is soul-destroying. He set up Crown Point Builders while B Byrne Builders was being wound up and now he has profiles on builder websites using all the photos of work done by B Byrne Builders to promote his new business! That is just an outright lie, but we can't do anything to stop him. We've lost so much money and had so much stress because of him and he gets to claim his business went bust because of Covid. I guess all we can do is share our story in the hope that no one else has the same horrific experience. Stay safe from bad builders!