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.

This is so helpful, thank you both of you. Will share with OH now.
Building Control aren't' answering the phone at all this week. It's beyond frustrating.

Look, I work for t’council and I have sympathy for the officers, particularly those working in any kind of enforcement capacity. We are way below having even skeleton cover now. I have statutory regulatory and enforcement duties (not buildings) and the team is down to one. Me. If I’m on holiday then no-one’s answering the calls and my to-get to-list would paper a bathroom.

But me bleating excuses is no help. You may want to add these folk to your reporting list -

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

Are you in a unitary or tiered local authority area? If unitary look up your councillor, if a tiered area look up your District/Borough councillor. Often if a councillor puts a rocket up one of my exec manager’s arses I’ll be told to drop what I was supposed to be doing and get the councillor off their back.

Get in touch and lay it on thick, use words like risk to public safety, modern day slavery, pollution of public amenities, noxious dust etc. Get them come round and have a look if you can.

Oh and one last thing. If your ward councillor is a bit of a wet blanket call the council and ask for the name of the cabinet member who has building control in their portfolio then badger them instead.

Thanks Murdo, will take all of that on bard.

Discovered today that the guy claiming to be a building contractor (told us he was also working on multi-million projects in London (lol)) has no MOT on his vehicle. His tiny, battered old vehicle, you know, the one he runs his multi million ££ business from.

Today revealed a few new issues, and a few concerns.

The work went on past legal hours so we waited for the workers to come out. We spoke to them, there were two young lads, only one could speak English.
He said he knew nothing, had only been hired for the day and had been instructed to put the key in a keysafe.

We probed a bit more and he told us the 'contractor' used a different guy each day, so none of them did more than one day's work. He looked scared and begged us not to make trouble for him. We told him that was fine.

It looks to me as if the contractor is doing this to evade some sort of detection.
I have no idea if the workers are legal, but they both came out carrying a large crate of fruit and pizza which they carried up the street. They don't even have access to transport.
We are presuming that the guy is cherry picking workers on the premise they won't come here twice.

No idea if reporting this to modern slavery is useful as no proof, but would appreciate any advice if there is a more appropriate course of action.

It has crossed my mind that someone might harm us if we push too hard. Perhaps that is a bit of paranoia, but it is the last thing i need.

I have been following your tale of woe (and it defo is one!). Given what the lad you spoke to today said, I suggest alongside keeping up the badgering with the council, you also call 101 and report your concerns about illegal working/modern day slavery etc... so more agencies are aware of what is going on...

Do you know where the key safe is?

Thanks Basil, it is attached to the side of the front door.

We are considering reporting the car without MOT, the weird recruitment practice and also to Health & Safety.

The guy who owns the house (the one i described as passive and afraid when I wrote the OP) seems to be made of teflon. It is like he has decided to die for this and just carried on going against laws even though Building Control have been in there twice.

All they do all day long is hammer. I have no idea how that could be construed as 'constructing walls.

I am hoping that if there are any darker forces at work here, that we are safe reporting it at all. I imagine that since we have been reporting him for over 6 months now our legs would have already been broken!

@MissMarplesCat You say

We are considering reporting the car without MOT, the weird recruitment practice and also to Health & Safety.

DO IT DO IT DO IT!

Continue to report potential dodgy H&S practices to building control at your local council. Copy in all your local councillors, your MP and the Health and Safety Executive.

While you're doing that, also report the car without an MOT via DVLA online (and any others cars that may visit with the same problem).

Report the potential illegal workers via 101 and mention their payment in kind appears to be via fruit/food etc.

A many-pronged attack is generally more successful than a "I'll wait on Building Control" approach xxx

A many-pronged attack is generally more successful than a "I'll wait on Building Control"

Yes, OH was adamant that BC would deal with it all but I have insisted they won't, so we are contacting everyone possible now.
Thanks Basil, will update when I can.

I think reporting the modern slavery is a good idea. If you don’t have a ring doorbell or any photos of the people coming and going already it might be worth making a diary of both the noise and descriptions of who arrives when. You can keep it to yourself but then if anything progresses you have it to fall back on? (Sorry if you’ve already said you’re doing this)

P.S love the username

You can report or get advice on suspected slavery here https://share.google/76vCAlxQWMIPknvLe
Always worth doing.

Please contact the Health and Safety Executive. Especially raise the concerns about worker welfare, site safety, and modern slavery.

Advise them that BC have the details of the owner who appears to be in control of the work.

You can phone them or report online. They enforce safety in construction.

Does anyone know how we locate the executive of H&S?
Also the council member in charge of Building Control?

Can we ask at the local council itself and do they have to provide us with their emails?

Apologies if seeming a bit green, we have never endured such a miserable adventure as this before.

What struck us as odd this evening after thinking about it - if building control were in there two weeks or so ago, why have they allowed him to continue with weak materials (breeze blocks), and since he even told us he had never applied for any planing permission, would they have fined him?

We will write a cover letter and include everything, just send it off to all depts.
Thanks so much everyone.

Contact the HSE here: https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm

Just mention which council / any names of staff at the council you've been in contact with - they can speak to them if they need to.

I’ve just read this thread from the beginning OP, this is crazy and I hope you get it resolved one way or another.

I was also going to suggest contacting HSE, I work for a construction firm and look after the H&S admin. We need to comply with modern slavery, produce risk assessments and method statements, PPE, abestos awareness, CITB certification and so on. And we employ less than 20 people.

Have a look at the HSE news section, it details the recent prosecutions. It makes some chilling reading.

Thanks every bit of help is appreciated.

Since no one will speak on the phone, we only have one reply from building control via email, and having seen them in the house next door recently.

No one is talking to us personally, so we don't have any names so far.

They might not need planning permission if it’s all internal work. It’s Building Standards that oversee internal safety/materials etc. So they ought to have a building warrant but they might not need planning permission. To get a building warrant you have to submit detailed plans, and it should be somewhere on the building standards portal for anyone to look at.

In England it's Building Regulations that need to be met, and overseen by Building Control. This can be via the Council, but there are private officers too. Building Regs applications are not publicly available in England.

Definitely contact your local Councillor(s). There will be contact details on the Council website.

I would also contact your local MP. With so many different agencies involved, they should be able to help coordinate.

If you feel that Building Control aren't being helpful/vigilant, and they are Council- managed (you should be able to tell from the email address you have), then write to the Council Chief Executive setting out your concerns.

Your primary concern must be the protection of your property and the safety of those within it. At this stage, the chances of selling are limited until there is resolution.

If you haven't already report the un-MOT'd car to the police and tell them where it's parked every day. IDK what the DVLA will do about it, if anything, but it's the police who pull you over and fine you/give you points. Sometimes they'll also put a prohibition notice on the vehicle if they see anything obviously unsafe or it generally looks like a shed. This means it can't be driven away there and then, it must be parked up until its booked in for an MOT and then driven straight to the garage. Or needs to be taken to a garage by tow truck if necessary, if it's obviously unroadworthy. That might put a stop to the guy temporarily, if he can't get to your place because his car's out of action. Although he's likely to ignore that too and drive away anyway, but if the police catch him doing that they'll be very unimpressed. Does anyone in your street have ring doorbells or other CCTV OP? Wouldn't be a pity if his car was left outside yours and some hooligans set it on fire overnight.

They've continued with breeze blocks because they're ignoring what they've been told. We have laws in the UK, but trying to get those with the power to enforce them to do so is another matter. Anyone into illegal stuff knows this already.

We finally got through to the police yesterday afternoon.
This was to report the MOT, but they were extremely interested in more info regarding the recruitment guy and work being done on the house in general. We supplied the address and car reg numbers, but that's all we have got.

No one arrived to work today, so whether it's just a day off or someone has been scared off I have no idea. They usually have sporadic days off (prob when he can't locate another unskilled immigrant to do the work in time).

Have also reported the conditions to H&S.
We are so worn out with hit this week that we have decided to compose our cover letter to the execs, etc over the weekend. We need a mental rest.

Thanks for sticking with me, it's been very isolating and this thread has been a lifesaver in many ways. I hope MN will let me keep it open so that I can eventually add details if it gets resolved. Oh for the day that might come!

We are still moving though, it's going to be very difficult, but plans are underway.

That's promising with the police, hopefully they remain interested, show up while he's there and get to see the shit show that's occurring inside.

If the recruiter is being contracted to do the work by the owner, then I imagine it's the recruiter who'll be in trouble for slavery, (unless perhaps he's just another victim of it 🤷. He's not much of a contractor if he doesn't even know what the word means!). A contractor is not an employee of the owner, they're an employee (or boss) of whatever company they work for and it's that company which would be the one responsible for paying employees national insurance, income tax, ensuring workers are legally allowed to work in the UK etc, so the police could get him for those too. As well as for (I suspect) running an unregistered business that pays no taxes on profits at all.

The car might be insured and registered to someone but they possibly wanted a description so if they pull him over they can help determine whether he's the one insured to drive it (he could lie about his identity). If not, they can do him for that too and seize the car. You can't get seized cars back without paying the fine, ensuring it has insurance and that the person about to drive it away is covered by insurance. So if it's a total shed, without insurance, not registered to its current owner or if they want to stay off police's radar then they may not bother ever reclaiming it. Which as a minimum means they'll have to scrape together the money for another uninsured clapped out heap from an auction to restart work on the house, which may give you a few weeks peace until they do.

Glad your DH is on board with moving now too.

Threads don't get locked on MN. They remain open for all eternity. That's why you sometimes get newbies who've run a search for something resurrecting a zombie thread.

Threads do fill up after 1000 posts though. You can put a link to the new thread at the end of this one if you realise it's filling up and a link to this thread in the first post of the new one, so people can just come read this thread and you don't end up explaining yourself twice. On my phone it fills up on page 40, IDK if that's universal or dependent on your settings.

If there's a gap of eg months between updates you will get tons of posters who've only read the first post and not clocked the date responding as if it's all fresh and new and unresolved, though. Updates as you go along, like you've been doing, generally works better to avoid that.

Thanks for the thread info @Cassieskinsismad !

Speaking of the 'contractor'....when we first stopped him outside we mentioned Building Control, and he replied "I am Building Control' (as if it was a person).

So we can probably presume he doesn't know what either BC or contractors actually are.

This is good news that the Police are actually looking at the bigger picture - hang on in there for as long as you can AND keep taking notes of car regs, description of people arriving etc and forward them regularly to the Police (I'm assuming you've been given a point of contact on that front - if not ask for one!)

Not really contributing much help here but seeing that OP you have updated - I remember posting in April about the building at the end of our road which had bits being built up/taken down/built up/taken down. Actually spoke to the guy out of curiosity a month or two ago - he was perfectly friendly (its not at all like your situation) he told us he was building an extension.

If so, he is doing it with his own bare hands in the most laborious way imaginable. Like mixing mortar by hand on a bit of plywood, picking up a trowel-full off his board and walking across the 'extension' to splot it on a breeze block, walk back, and repeat. Like your people, he is not native British I don't think, though speaks reasonably good English. However, possibly not aware we have building regulations, no hard hat (its just him) etc etc.

ANYWAY the point is that eventually Building Control must have paid a visit because suddenly Heras (?) fencing all round, the regular site notices re hard hats no children no entry etc etc. AND the whole roof and one (one and a half?) of the walls have been taken down. As presumably not meeting regs or structural engineers requirements.

I am less suspicious my chap is money laundering now, he seems so incompetent I can't see how he would organise it. But on the other hand this was his business (I think? I only went in a couple of times) and it has been closed for at least a year, so God knows.

But I pray that in your case OP there is some effective action from someone. It seems preposterous that they (whoever they turn out to be) have been getting away with it for so long. It sounds as though perhaps you don't know your neighbours very well, or belong to a village facebook group or similar? Just wondering if anyone else has any explanation that is beyond mere speculation.

Wishing you the very best of luck, you have all my sympathy.