What the heck is this guy doing next door?

[MissMarplesCat]

We live in a very small village in a row a 4 cottages. The end terrace is joined to us, and had previously housed an old lady for many years, who then went into care. The house stood empty for a few years then put up for sale. It seems that it was in a bad state of repair (very dated), so went on to auction.
A man purchased it last January and when we got chatting he said he hadn't viewed it prior to bidding and was horrified at the amount of work he'd have to do.
We expected contract work to begin, but he only had one guy, this guy is not a professional in any sense of the word, and to date has damaged our roof (dealt with), fitted all of the windows incorrectly, badly plastered some walls, then hacked it all off and put boards up instead (!), and caused plaster work in our hallway to crumble.

We kept things as friendly as possible, but since last January he has been there most weekdays with his helper chap and they have not stopped smashing at the walls in all of that time. Around 5 skips of bricks have been completed so far, although no interior walls have been removed! Since we can hear a pin drop in there now, it seems like they have removed bricks from the party wall.

As of early Feb this year they are coming 7 days per week. I presume the helper is family or a friend and getting some cash for his trouble.

There's no getting your head around this. The man is very shy and non communicative and looks desperate to get it ready for his small family. What concerns us is that a gas boiler has been delivered from a car (not a plumber van) and left in there. DP overheard him discussing fitting it with an older man who warned hm he wanted nothing to do with it. Make of that what you will.

The guy seems to be struggling financially and very desperate, and whilst friendly, he has already told us a few lies.

Since a few weeks back they have been coming every day even sunday, horrific noise from early until after 5pm. Through last year they even did Easter sunday, and all of the bank holidays, which i thought was illegal for building/construction?
He tried to do Xmas even and Xmas day until DP told he would call the police.

Between October and January this guy was hammering at the front bedroom window frame daily to try to refit it, to no avail. DP works from home so it's sheer hell. It is taking him quadruple the time to do anything because he won't hire professionals. It looks like a bomb site.

Anything we can do here? We have been passed on to planning as council told us building regs no longer have a number. God knows what that means. We've been very tolerant since we knew he was struggling, but since he has already damaged our property and had to repair it, we are getting very concerned and fed up. We doubt anything in there is legit, and he told us when he first bought it that he hadn't had it surveyed, etc.
We think the helper is just a cash in hand guy, with little to no knowledge of what he is doing, and we are very tired of the 7 days a week noise at this point. We have tried to talk, and whilst he is polite, he just lies to us about reducing the days and carries on.

Sorry this is long! Any advice welcome.

My condolences... Get planning officer on your side and be ready to intervene to block any irregular extensions. Once built, much harder to get council to act.

Have you got a party wall agreement in place? We had a similar situation where our attached neighbour bought the house and on day 1 knocked down the rear extension which has a shared roof space with ours, essentially leaving our house open to the sky. Luckily we have a friend who is a surveyor who came round straight away and read them the riot act. They had to retrospectively get a party wall agreement, pay all costs for surveyors and building inspectors for both sides and repair the damage. We had reasonable working hours put into the agreement because they also felt 6am and 10pm were reasonable times to start drilling. It cost them about £10k to sort out plus a long delay in their build. Tough shit.
In your situation I’d be really concerned that they are removing structural elements without submitting plans etc which could damage your property and affect the value and future saleability. We will have to declare a dispute with the neighbours if we ever sell but on the flip side we have proof all the work was triple inspected. They didn’t really leave us much option, if they had applied for a PWA before starting work we would not have objected.

In your situation I’d be really concerned that they are removing structural elements without submitting plans etc which could damage your property and affect the value and future saleability.

Yes. we are looking into this. DP has been pulling his feet due to feeling sorry for them but I think we've reached peak sympathy now.
We never had to do anything previously since the old lady was there for 20 yrs, and I'd say we are somewhat out of practice with this kind of thing.

We just can't get our head around how unconventional the work is.
Why on earth would anyone take bricks away that aren't a demolished wall?
Luckily no extensions as no room, houses are very tiny as are gardens.
They seem to have spent 13 months smashing things away that are not meant to be smashed.

Thanks both, some helpful stuff here. Looking forward to another 7am Sunday rude awakening :(

https://www.gov.uk/party-walls-building-works/print

Sorry I meant to add the party wall stuff and it didn’t post. You have my sympathy it is awful having ongoing noisy work, quite apart from the worry about what they are up to!

This sounds exactly like my old neighbour! Middle aged man living on his own, who employed a lone builder mate to build a two storey extension on his house. It took 3 years of on and off building work. It would stop for several weeks and then restart with a vengeance on all days of the week. I honestly started to lose my mind over it. Constant noise, living on edge of it all starting up again.

The neighbour didn't communicate at all and wouldn't give us any timelines when we asked. He even had the cheek to complain about us making normal household noise (closed a window). He wasn't a nice individual and seemed to despise us living nextdoor to him.

As it dragged on and on, I called the council to enquire whether there was a time limit on completing building works which required planning permission. There isn't. Provided you break ground and start work within the specified time limit, you can literally take an infinite amount of time to finish the work!

We could have gone down the noise complaint route, but decided to move. We waited until the external evidence of the building work disappeared e.g. no more scaffolding and building crap littered about. Then listed the house and moved.

Can you pin down your neighbour to any time limits? Does any of the work require planning? There are stipulations about building hours, but how these are enforced without the issue becoming a formal complaint I don't know. Sorry OP, it really really sucks.

I work in a planning department, and I think that being referred to planning is a bit of a fob off. I get someone at least once a week complaining about an neighbour’s building work, but there’s very little that our department can do. Unless any of the works actually require planning permission and they don’t have it in place, then it’s outside of the planning department’s control. Unless it’s a listed building, all of the internal works sound ok, unless you’re in a conservation area or have some other control in place, changing windows and roof is usually fine.
Planning can put construction conditions onto approved planning permission, for example restricting hours of work or ensuring that waste is moved off site quickly. This is fairly unusual for householder developments though, and doesn’t sound like it likely applies in this case.
Reporting a noise concern to the environmental health department is one avenue.
Keep trying the building control department though, they are the ones that are most likely to look into this. There will be a way to contact them, most likely an online form to report instead of a phone number.

Thank you for the replies.
DP was told someone from planning would visit this coming week, so will see what happens.
DP is also convinced that him doing saturdays and sunday is illegal and had thtis confirmed by police, although I wasnt there a the time of the call. Perhaps they're fobbing him off, no idea.
We were told no building work after 1pm saturdays and at any time sundays. Most work of that nature does seem to stop around here unless it's an emergency.

We are more concerned with potential damage to our property if support walls have been 'altered'. Our vestibule has bowed in and sections around. the door are falling off. I am also certain he is going to fit the boiler himself which is a danger to our walls also.
DP heard him say, regarding the boiler "I will find a way to fit it, I can't afford to hire someone). Now surely that is extremely dangerous!!?

I'd contact Building Safety, if he's removed that many bricks there could be a risk of collapse.

www.gov.uk/guidance/contact-the-building-safety-regulator

Get Planning / Building Control to respond urgently, make it clear personal safety concerns due to structural damage in your property and inform your insurers of the damage, get them on the case too.

Report boiler concerns to these

I would be worried he's not going to be covered by his buildings insurance even if he has any if he's doing the work so badly, which leaves you up shit creek if he causes structural damage to yours. I'd get someone to look at the damage to yours and read him the riot act sharpish, get this stopped.

I would certainly be worried if he’s attempting to mess with gas or do any boiler works himself . He could mess with anything or cause life threatening situations . I would get some advice from CAB .

Do you have a chimney breast on that shared wall? I’m wondering if he’s taken it out? It might explain where the bricks have come from.

I might be contacting my own insurer at this point.

This is helpful, thanks so much.

3 days before xmas he had some guy hammering at the roof and managed to damage ours. He was put out that he had to actually hire a professional to repair it, not to mention a lot of money down. You'd think this would deter him but no.

It's like he is so desperate he will do anything to save money, or else he is frightened of something. In over 14 months we have only ever seen him drive his worker to the property, no one ever has a work van. Everything from the windows to the walls have been treated unprofessionally.

The hammering at the party walls has been going on for over a year, we can't even think of what there is left to hit at. They are not constructing new walls or knocking out old ones out (we have been n there twice, briefly). Before covering walls in plasterboard they tried using regular plaster but it went wrong so perhaps they had to hammer all of that off too!

I doubt anything in there is standard.

I reckon it's something like this. Our old neighbour in our old semi did this and the noise was diabolical. They also went at it all hours and apparently it was classed as DIY so as long as they weren't causing a legal nuisance that was fine.

Chimney breasts were removed last March, and the skips containing those bricks were removed at the time. So god knows where the other piles were from as the house plan is still the same. It is as if bricks were smashed off the actual existing walls.

For months there was just a mountain of bricks in the front room, growing until it reached ceiling height, then they'd put it all in a skip. Then another,......and this is after the chimney breast bricks were long gone.

The only pro who has been near the place was an electrician last summer. He spoke to us at the door before leaving and said he was horrified. We had windows fitted in November ourselves and our fitters told us to get onto building regs as almost everything they'd done next door was bonkers.

Only speculation (but it gets you that way after this long!) but the owner told us he worked long hours full time, except he is there every day between 8am and 5pm.
His helper is seemingly available 7 days per week, yet the owner told us he is in terrible trouble financially, so it puzzles me how he is able to pay him.
He has a wife and two small children, pleasant enough, yet they very rarely visit the property. He told us he was eager to get his family a proper home.

I think he has a sunk cost.
Also he didn't view the place before bidding on it and said. he was out of his depth on looking inside after getting keys. He really did look terrified back then. We thought he'd sell up but his wife and kids looked so excited, I guess he doesn't want to let them down

Your local council absolutely will have a building standards department that building warrants are submitted to.

Sounds like he's doing work he should have one for. Google your area and building standards it may be an email address. Mark the email as high priority and put urgent safety concerns and the address as the title.

If they visit and he is found to have done work that requires a warrant hel need to stop until he has it approved and the work will need to be done to a high enough condition that the completion certificate is passed when the building standards inspector visits. He will therefore likely be required to use professionals. No one should be fucking about with installing a boiler if they aren't corgi registered.

I'd report him far and wide. The council, your MP, environmental health, anyone. I am very concerned that the sparky was horrified and he thinks his mate can fit a boiler.

You've put up with this long enough. I doubt he has any money but that's why you don't buy a money pit.

Thanks, will definitely report to all suggested areas.

DP has sent him several texts in the past month asking if he could possibly tell us when the 7 day per week thing will end. All have been ignored. DP also sent texts last week informing him that he has tried to communicate and will have to seek legal advice, and that he is reporting him to the council.
No reply.

Since this, he has started to park his vehicle (a small black car) two streets away when he visits, when there is ample room around the property. It's all very odd. There haven't been any issues with his vehicle.
He has also stuck paper to all of the lower windows, and no, we have never peered in!

Edited to add : the texts were sent after he had started turning up after 9pm hammering at the walls.

I cannot understand why you have allowed the seven days a week nonsense to go on to so long. You sound a bit feeble, sorry to say, no wonder he is taking advantage!

Every council has clear rules on this and you can report breaches. Get your local councillor involved, make clear formal complaints to the council, get your local MP involved. Follow the process rather than sending him meek messages asking his long he’s going to illegally make noise 7 days a week, for gods sake!

As for all this stuff about what he can and cannot afford is irrelevant. He needs to comply with the laws in place inthis country, be that working hours, party wall or building regs.

So where have all the bricks come from? You say he has already removed the chimney breast- right up to the roof? Is your chimney part of the same stack?

Could he have removed the bricks from his side of the party wall? Perhaps to make his rooms bigger? This could account for the increased noise coming through.
If he has, then you need to know as it would seriously affect the stability of your house!

If he’s removed the chimney breast, what is holding up the chimney? It could come crashing down any second if nothing, into your house…

Yes, in Scotland. In England some councils have outsourced building control to private, or semi private, companies. There will be someone responsible for it, but not necessarily at the council itself. The front desk council call taker should be able to tell you who though.

(The first time I encountered one of these private companies they were an absolute revelation of delight to work with compared to councils...)