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.

do you think the workers are there against their own free will? There could be a modern slavery situation going on.

Sounds like he bought the house , tried to take out the chimney breasts without a clue or a thought to what's involved and why these things are that way in this country and now doesn't know how to actually fix the problem. Just using other people from his community none of which equally have an idea or much of a grasp of English. Keep an eye on it , keep building control on it. They will step in if it gets dangerous.

The fine you mention is “up to a maximum of £20k”

it would be preceded by a long court process

the council would rather these things get fixed than having to drag the home owner through the courts, and it is totally possible for you to report anything outside the regs to building control

tbh you sound a bit naive and lacking in basic info - you need to wise up on the law and you should have got a party wall Agreement, btw - you need to take action on that.

all this conjecture about what the guy was thinking or feeling and what language his labourers speak is pointless. Stick to the facts and the law, you need to wise up and educate yourselves a bit, come on.

all along you’ve been sitting ther fretting watching a shit show unfold but not done much about it - the council will act, but you need to lean on them, they won’t pop around to check you know. You have to push the council to enforce safe building practice.

you should be getting legal advice from your home insurance as well, pick up the phone!

rather than the two of you being passive victims until you’re ready to scream with frustration, take control of the situation and be proactive.

its a terrible situation but you need to really wise up and take control of driving a solution, it’s not going to fix itself.

Are they doing work on your party wall? Have they got a party wall agreement with you?

Exactly what I was going to say

And also, I think that's a complaint that may actually get looked at.

@MissMarplesCat you need to think in terms of how to get the authorities to take notice of this. The feelings and circumstances of the people doing the work are not worth your mental time.

i'm unclear if you have had any recent contact with the police. There is a specific telephone line for reporting modern slavery. Working as a builder is quite a common thing in this.

Not sure he would need a part wall agreement to take out chimney breasts that are not on our side.

And yes, the language barrier is a huge communication issue, and we are concerned that some of the workers are being taken advantage of.

We have had legal advice for all that we are able to get.

"sitting and fretting" ? Just honestly fuck off with your abrasive attitude. I am not in the goddamn mood tonight.

Apologies to everyone else, I am at my bloody wit's end.

Get them to talk into google translate on your phone, then the language barrier becomes less of a problem/excuse.

They're not likely to be telling the truth, though

So I'm not sure I'd bother

Oh what a worry. This seems like the kind of thing that involve the police but you end up with council departments which don’t seem to ever get anything done.

It's nearly 11:30 and my nervous system is fried. What a day.
I think a move is on the cards for us, not that we are looking forward to the stress of that. We obviously have no intention of hiding the problem, so feel utterly lost.
We made financial decisions on the premise we would be staying here, uuurgh.

So many little terraced houses now are going this way - older people die off, and families never move in, possibly preferring a new build.

Oddly enough the only neighbour on this small street that seems to care about the place or what's happening is a long term renter. He has been a real boon and so helpful. I am amazed by the lack of interest from the other homeowners here.

Re: party wall.

It depends on which direction they are planning on putting the steels in. If they go across the house and fix on your joint wall, an agreement would be required and you can then appoint your own surveyor at their cost. It’s worth asking them their plans.

I would also contact building regs and ask them what they (the builders) have to do to remedy the damage … and time scale.

Will do that today, thanks Daftapath.

We are honestly so fed up we are considering selling up and renting. At least we could easily move on if this ever happened again.
We'd get so very little for this house now, and could only really afford to buy in a less decent area.

No rash decisions though in a time of stress!

I haven’t read the ft but your post interests me. We used to have a small business buying, modernising and selling on houses. Your situation is odd and understandably causing you much stress and misery. Firstly, have you searched the land registry documents to find who owns the house or the sub lease. I used to do a lot of research on properties going to auction ( some unbelievable cowboy sellers on there ). An example was a flat going to auction that I tracked down the owner and she didn’t even know it was up for auction sale, so had time to block it. If you pm the full address of the house I will try and look up some stuff that might help you get some additional information .Obviously you might have done all the research you need. Lots of advice on here will be accurate…building works can only be done during certain hours unkess diy which this isn’t. Also, perhaps an obvious thing, have you tried to communicate using google translate. You can try querying Romanian? Iranian etc.

Update - these arrived this morning, looks like stones and fragments of cement.

Dangerous Buildings paid him another visit two weeks go and he vanished again. He was not allowed to use breeze blocks for hte chimney breasts, and we thought work had halted again.

Today he is back with the same unskilled worker, he is like a determined zombie, no matter what you put in his way, he doesn't stop.

If anyone can say what those two sacks might be for, concerning rebuilding chimney breasts that would be helpful!

Sand and stones might be for making a very rough concrete for a floor or foundation, but you couldn't buid vertically with those lose stones I don't think?

Thanks for that :)

He has removed walls but not floors, it feels like he makes it up as he goes along!

Yeh stones, sand and cement is how you make concrete. I'd be concerned about him putting up an extension outside somewhere, without planning consent.

Can't think what he'd be wanting with it inside, unless he's damaged the floor of the house dropping things on it (all the banging and clanging you heard before?) and is planning to re-lay another layer on top in an attempt to even things out. Which if it's too thin will just break up again anyway.

Breeze blocks are cheaper than bricks that'll be why he was using them. They're also more porous, I think, so can't see how they're suitable to potentially have heat and smoke from a fireplace going up them!

He's a total nightmare OP.

We saw the woman from Building Control in there, filling in a vast amount of papers in her car afterwards. She had seen the line of breezeblocks, and we presumed, since he didn't come back for a while, that he had been told to stop.

It beggars belief that he would simply resume, whilst under investigation, to create more financial losses for himself, as it seems he goes out of his way to find the most unconventional, cheap and illegal way of fixing his problems.

Due to give BC a call Wednesday as won't be here tomorrow. We need to ask what is being done and if people are keeping tabs on it.

No work currently being done on our party wall but we are poised to act if it begins.

Their garden is tiny, like a few feet square. Unlike the rest of the houses in the row, his garden tapers oddly and is less than a quarter of the size of ours. It is currently flagged with no room for even a shed. It is also chock full of crap from inside the house, so he certainly isn't working out there.
There is literally no room for any kind of extension, and I can't imagine him creating more financial losses in doing so whilst having to replace 4 chimney breasts.

Hmm 🤔 some kind of moulded set-up? Then pour the concrete into it and when dry use that as a "wall" for the chimney breast? Or to use as some kind of internal wall to divide a room? Obviously a death-trap that could fall down.

I take it there's no front or side space he could extend into or lay a concrete path on?

His garden sounds like a small backyard and of little use to him as it is. I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to lay a better floor there and puts up walls (he already has breeze blocks) and a roof of some kind so he has another room, even if it's just for storage.

Definitely right to call building control. Whatever he's up to, it won't be good! I'm glad they've caught him out twice now, it adds weight to whatever else you end up needing to report. No he said/she said here, they know he's a wrong'un, they've seen it.

Thanks Cassie, there's no space for an extension, nor do i think he could possibly try attacking that whilst needing to fund 4 chimney breasts. You are likely correct that he is trying to use these materials to build them!

Will update after trying to talk to BC tomorrow.

Injunction?

Guy who is organising work at the moment spoke to us yesterday that the owner is determined to do it all 'off the books' so we are now interested in reporting him for possible fraud, too.
He claimed to be a contractor then admitted he had no idea what that was
Rest of what he told us was blatant lies.

No one in there has any protection or skill.
The current 'worker' is around pension age severely underweight and hobbles off with a busted rucksack at the end of the day.

He is determined to ignore building control and do whatever he wants. I just wonder when it will end.

Guy in there today has been hitting a wall with what sounds like a mallet for over 5 hours. Not so much construction as destruction, as usual.

From your current/previous comments re lack of PPE for the workers as they're not the owners themselves doing the work you can report as an unsafe workplace to HSE.

It sounds a nightmare to live next-door to.

In case its useful -

To report to Health and Safety Executive (unsafe working conditions) https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm

To report a concern about modern slavery https://www.modernslaveryhelpline.org/report

To report a potentially dangerous building or structure (goes to your council but will get flagged as an escalation by coming via .gov) https://www.gov.uk/report-dangerous-building-structure

OP buy a burner phone (in case anyone needs the physical phone as evidence) and start recording these conversations. IDK if it'll help but at least it won't be he said/she said. Half these works will need signing off by people with the relevant qualifications to pass building regulations checks. I know electric does, not sure what else. So either months of work and it doesn't pass and has to be redone (meaning tons of unnecessary noise and potential fire risks if it involves electricity) or he's planning to bribe people into giving him a certificate saying they did whatever it was and checked it and all's good.