‘Work on new our kitchen just went to hell...’
A SWANSEA couple have claimed the Llanelli builder they paid to work on their kitchen burst the house next door’s water mains and didn’t bother telling anyone. Instead he tried using everything from adhesive tape to cement to plug the hole before boarding over it resulting in the leak going undetected for 18 months.
Hannah and David James hired Llanelli-based firm JME Building & Groundworks Ltd a week after getting married in October 2019 in the hope they would revamp the tired lean-to in their three-bed terrace in the city’s Manselton area. The pair were quoted almost £12,000 for the work and given an estimated time frame of two to three weeks for completion.
However, several months later the couple still found themselves “living on a building site” and were even forced to hire a replacement tradesman to rectify what had been done to their property. The second builder would later brand the initial construction work “the worst he’d ever seen” and “absolutely shambolic.”
Hannah, a 30-year-old senior lab technician, said they picked the initial company after finding them on Yell. “[They] had good reviews and seemed like a safe bet. We couldn’t have been more wrong though. From the moment [they] pulled down our original lean-to in order to build the extension everything just went to hell.”
Hannah admitted she and David may have been “a little bit too trusting” in believing JME Building & Groundworks Ltd as they claim they were told no planning permission was required to carry out the work needed to be done. “[They] just started attaching everything directly onto next door’s exterior brickwork,” she said.
“[They were] very confident and assured us both it was all fine. We’d never even heard of a ‘party wall agreement’ at the time but we damn well know all about it now.”
Integral to the 1996 Party Wall Act such an agreement ensures that, while planning rules for extensions have been significantly relaxed in recent years, homeowners are safeguarded from any potential damage to their property from neighbouring building projects. That’s because poorly-executed structural alterations can often cause cracking and movement in adjoining buildings.
“In the process of doing all this [they] damaged next door’s water main, causing it to leak back into our property,” said Hannah. “That went undetected for 18 months because [they] didn’t tell anyone – instead attempting to plug the leak with adhesive tape and cement.
“[They] then covered it all over with plyboard, which was also nonregulation thickness. As a result we went on for ages thinking we had a damp problem.
“The house next door was empty at the time too so it’s not like we could even ask the neighbours if they’d noticed anything.” In addition Hannah listed a further catalogue of alleged handiwork woes including leaky fibreglass roof and badly-fitted patio doors which fell off their hinges to uneven floor tiles.
“It got to the point where David, who’s a software engineer, would try to stay home most days just to keep an eye on what was happening. It put a lot of strain on our relationship as neither of us were sleeping properly and we were both living on our nerves.”
The onset of Covid restrictions in early 2020 then saw work on the project come to a stop with the firm promising to return. “But when things started to relax again [they] refused to come back, telling us that the work was complete,” claimed Hannah.
Hannah said that the person they paid at JME Building & Groundworks Ltd has since given back around half of the money they gave upfront. However a subsequent county court judgement stipulating the individual must reimburse them a further £4,705 remains outstanding.
“I just need an end to this now,” she added. “I also want to warn others so no-one else winds up in the same situation as us.”
According to the Companies House website JME Building & Groundworks Ltd has now dissolved. When contacted a spokesman for the now-defunct firm said they had “paid back half the money to Hannah and David and the rest will hopefully come once the insolvency company has gone through [the] firm’s assets. The Jameses will have been made fully aware of that.” The spokesman claimed they had advised the pair upon starting work that a building control project manager would have been needed but added that they “didn’t want to pay for one.”
However when one finally was appointed the spokesman said they were given a list of issues or “snags” that needed rectifying, but irrespective of what was done “the couple still weren’t happy.” The spokesman said by the time Covid regulations had lightened they had “too much other work on” to return to the couple’s home. They also denied knowing anything about a broken water mains and said they would be consulting solicitors on the matter.