Apologies in advance for the long post, but this is a long story.
4-5 years ago, a builder bought the plot of land that lies between us and an elderly neighbour.
Throughout the whole of the build time we had a lot of trouble with thing like vans parked so close to our drive it was a hazard to pull out ( The police said they could do nothing unless there was an accident ), radios left on all night, used the woods over the road as a toilet, had huge fires which left ash all over our car and smoke in our house which was sucked in though the airbrick.
This is at a time when my then 3yr old daughter had just come home from hospital after having eye surgery and was still recovering. I told the gaffer and he said “well that's not my fault is it”. I had to get demonstrably angry before they agreed to stop having fires.
They left a large gap in the wall unsecured which led to a 4 foot drop onto footings. Again only after getting annoyed and pointing out that my children could be injured, did they half heartedly block up the gap by leaning a piece of old fencing against it.
We and other neighbours were woken up at 6am one sunday morning by a couple of people who were there to drop the curb at the front of his house. A complaint to the council ( Derbyshire CC ) regarding this went unanswered.
As they were uprooting tree stumps they managed to move one of our gate posts ( a large 130yr old stone post ), which in turn caused our gates to overlap ( they repositioned the gates, but didn't touch the post ), the post is still in it's moved position, also knocked part of the party wall over dividing our plots.
At the back he built his garden up so it is much higher than it used to be. This has made the party wall that runs along the side of our garage bulge out considerably.
2 yrs ago and even though the house wasn't finished, he ( the builder ) and his family moved in.
We have asked him on many occasions to repair the damage and even though on every occasion he promises to do it, nothing at all has been done.
This started to come to a head a few weeks ago when we noticed him moving out. I managed to collar him and he told me, it was a last minute thing as he was going to finish the house.
A couple more weeks went by and we noticed him taking things from the house. Again I collared him and he promised the work would be starting soon.
A couple more weeks went by and he wasn't to be seen anywhere.
I was in the garden one evening when a guy appeared, walking cross his ( the builders ) lawn. He asked me if i'd seen him, and during a short conversation he told me was owed money and suggested the house may have been “snatched”.
At this stage we are concerned that “the builder” had maybe gone bankrupt and non of the repairs would ever be done.
We wrote to him, listing our grievances and asking for his proposals in writing with 7 days. When we tried to deliver it, we found we couldn't as he'd taken his postbox down.
We did a bit of detective work and found that he had another property, though it appeared empty, so we videoed ourselves delivering it there.
A few days later he turned up at the house and I managed to speak to him. I asked him what had happened to his postbox and he told it had been taken as he didn't want it to fill up and that he had made arrangements to pick it up from the postoffice. We told him about the letter and he acknowledged the other property was his.
Again with more promises to do the repairs ( he was sorry he'd not started as he'd just been away on holiday ), he left.
2 weeks went past when one day a large man knocked on the door from an electricity company asking to see “the builder” saying he had a very large bill to pay. Very confused we directed him to the builders house next door and gave him the other address we had found.
A couple of days later the postman knocked on and asked us where the guy was from next door was, as he couldn't deliver the huge bundle of letters he had in his hands.
Later that day I was talking to another neighbour who told me about the problems the elderly lady on the other side of the “the builders” house, has had and was having.
What I was told concerned me, so I managed to speak to one of the elderly ladies daughters.
It turns out the elderly lady and her daughter had been facing similar ( though rather worse ) battles to ourselves.
The elderly lady is frail and rather vulnerable. It turns out the builder/s had been running a power cable out of the elderly ladies garage during the day and removing it before a daughter came back from work ( they gave her a small token payment despite running up a sizeable bill ), they used her drive as access to the land, quite happy to drive small caterpillar diggers up it, ruining it, and pulled down her fencing and concrete fence posts. She also has problems with internal doors not fitting since the new house was built and other issues.
The builder did attempt to put her drive right, but made a mess of it. He replaced perfectly decent slabs with cheap ones and never cemented the gaps so when it rained all of the sand was washed out from underneath and onto the road. Her driveway is a bigger mess now than it was before.
We ( the elderly ladies daughter and I ) both wrote letters and hand delivered them together a few days ago. The builder answered the door smelling of takeaway curry and beer. We gave him the letters and spoke about our grievances. He was also told in no uncertain terms to stay away from the elderly lady and not speak to her without her daughter being present.
We set up a meeting for the following Saturday morning. I received a text on the Saturday morning from the builder which said there was no point in having a meeting as he would be starting work on Monday ( 17th Sept ). I texted back saying that we require his proposals in writing before any work could be started. He said he would get a surveyor out and that he would be seeking to recover costs and told me to direct any more letters to his limited company ( although he told us it was a private build ).
I checked his company out on the companies house website and it's status is “Compulsory Strike Off Suspended” which believe from further reading is something to do with a creditor holding the folding up of the company, which was started last year.
Later on in the afternoon he turned up at the elderly ladies home. Another neighbour tried to alert us that he was there, but by the time I had heard and got outside he'd left.
He has again been told ( by txt this time ) to stay away from the elderly lady.
So that is where we are up to.
We've had planning control out to look, but whilst being very sympathetic to us and annoyed at the state of the build, there is nothing they can really do to help.
She's elderly and vulnerable, i'm partially disabled with a family and a small business ( very small at the moment ) which my wife and I run. We all find this very stressful to deal with.
We are worried about incurring large legal bills which neither of us can afford. We've checked legal cover insurance, she does, we don't ( I don't know why that one slipped us by ).
I'm sorry for the long post and thanks for making it this far
.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Update 17th Sept. He turned up at his house today, cut his lawn, then I caught him snooping around the old ladies driveway. I confronted him about about, he denied all knowledge of anyone telling him to stay away ( even though I was there for one the instances ). He left soon after.
So the promise that he would talk with me today was another empty one.
4-5 years ago, a builder bought the plot of land that lies between us and an elderly neighbour.
Throughout the whole of the build time we had a lot of trouble with thing like vans parked so close to our drive it was a hazard to pull out ( The police said they could do nothing unless there was an accident ), radios left on all night, used the woods over the road as a toilet, had huge fires which left ash all over our car and smoke in our house which was sucked in though the airbrick.
This is at a time when my then 3yr old daughter had just come home from hospital after having eye surgery and was still recovering. I told the gaffer and he said “well that's not my fault is it”. I had to get demonstrably angry before they agreed to stop having fires.
They left a large gap in the wall unsecured which led to a 4 foot drop onto footings. Again only after getting annoyed and pointing out that my children could be injured, did they half heartedly block up the gap by leaning a piece of old fencing against it.
We and other neighbours were woken up at 6am one sunday morning by a couple of people who were there to drop the curb at the front of his house. A complaint to the council ( Derbyshire CC ) regarding this went unanswered.
As they were uprooting tree stumps they managed to move one of our gate posts ( a large 130yr old stone post ), which in turn caused our gates to overlap ( they repositioned the gates, but didn't touch the post ), the post is still in it's moved position, also knocked part of the party wall over dividing our plots.
At the back he built his garden up so it is much higher than it used to be. This has made the party wall that runs along the side of our garage bulge out considerably.
2 yrs ago and even though the house wasn't finished, he ( the builder ) and his family moved in.
We have asked him on many occasions to repair the damage and even though on every occasion he promises to do it, nothing at all has been done.
This started to come to a head a few weeks ago when we noticed him moving out. I managed to collar him and he told me, it was a last minute thing as he was going to finish the house.
A couple more weeks went by and we noticed him taking things from the house. Again I collared him and he promised the work would be starting soon.
A couple more weeks went by and he wasn't to be seen anywhere.
I was in the garden one evening when a guy appeared, walking cross his ( the builders ) lawn. He asked me if i'd seen him, and during a short conversation he told me was owed money and suggested the house may have been “snatched”.
At this stage we are concerned that “the builder” had maybe gone bankrupt and non of the repairs would ever be done.
We wrote to him, listing our grievances and asking for his proposals in writing with 7 days. When we tried to deliver it, we found we couldn't as he'd taken his postbox down.
We did a bit of detective work and found that he had another property, though it appeared empty, so we videoed ourselves delivering it there.
A few days later he turned up at the house and I managed to speak to him. I asked him what had happened to his postbox and he told it had been taken as he didn't want it to fill up and that he had made arrangements to pick it up from the postoffice. We told him about the letter and he acknowledged the other property was his.
Again with more promises to do the repairs ( he was sorry he'd not started as he'd just been away on holiday ), he left.
2 weeks went past when one day a large man knocked on the door from an electricity company asking to see “the builder” saying he had a very large bill to pay. Very confused we directed him to the builders house next door and gave him the other address we had found.
A couple of days later the postman knocked on and asked us where the guy was from next door was, as he couldn't deliver the huge bundle of letters he had in his hands.
Later that day I was talking to another neighbour who told me about the problems the elderly lady on the other side of the “the builders” house, has had and was having.
What I was told concerned me, so I managed to speak to one of the elderly ladies daughters.
It turns out the elderly lady and her daughter had been facing similar ( though rather worse ) battles to ourselves.
The elderly lady is frail and rather vulnerable. It turns out the builder/s had been running a power cable out of the elderly ladies garage during the day and removing it before a daughter came back from work ( they gave her a small token payment despite running up a sizeable bill ), they used her drive as access to the land, quite happy to drive small caterpillar diggers up it, ruining it, and pulled down her fencing and concrete fence posts. She also has problems with internal doors not fitting since the new house was built and other issues.
The builder did attempt to put her drive right, but made a mess of it. He replaced perfectly decent slabs with cheap ones and never cemented the gaps so when it rained all of the sand was washed out from underneath and onto the road. Her driveway is a bigger mess now than it was before.
We ( the elderly ladies daughter and I ) both wrote letters and hand delivered them together a few days ago. The builder answered the door smelling of takeaway curry and beer. We gave him the letters and spoke about our grievances. He was also told in no uncertain terms to stay away from the elderly lady and not speak to her without her daughter being present.
We set up a meeting for the following Saturday morning. I received a text on the Saturday morning from the builder which said there was no point in having a meeting as he would be starting work on Monday ( 17th Sept ). I texted back saying that we require his proposals in writing before any work could be started. He said he would get a surveyor out and that he would be seeking to recover costs and told me to direct any more letters to his limited company ( although he told us it was a private build ).
I checked his company out on the companies house website and it's status is “Compulsory Strike Off Suspended” which believe from further reading is something to do with a creditor holding the folding up of the company, which was started last year.
Later on in the afternoon he turned up at the elderly ladies home. Another neighbour tried to alert us that he was there, but by the time I had heard and got outside he'd left.
He has again been told ( by txt this time ) to stay away from the elderly lady.
So that is where we are up to.
We've had planning control out to look, but whilst being very sympathetic to us and annoyed at the state of the build, there is nothing they can really do to help.
She's elderly and vulnerable, i'm partially disabled with a family and a small business ( very small at the moment ) which my wife and I run. We all find this very stressful to deal with.
We are worried about incurring large legal bills which neither of us can afford. We've checked legal cover insurance, she does, we don't ( I don't know why that one slipped us by ).
I'm sorry for the long post and thanks for making it this far
.Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Update 17th Sept. He turned up at his house today, cut his lawn, then I caught him snooping around the old ladies driveway. I confronted him about about, he denied all knowledge of anyone telling him to stay away ( even though I was there for one the instances ). He left soon after.
So the promise that he would talk with me today was another empty one.