Missing insulation in vaulted ceiling

[Roger440]

On 01/11/2023 at 10:22, Jilly said:

‘Independent’ inspectors have too much of a conflict of interest imo. How could you expect a BCO to be strict with a developer who is paying them and they want to secure further inspection contracts? The Council run BC’s are truly more ‘independent’. 

 

More independant, probably. But equally useless. See my previous posts.

[Roger440]

On 01/11/2023 at 10:38, ETC said:

I completely agree.

 

Where in the regulations does it say that BC can carry out sample inspections?

 

They dont need to carry out ANY inspections if they dont want to.

 

They can (and obviously in some cases do) sign it all off from the comfort of their armchair.

 

As the OP is finding out, out in the real world, there is no recourse against BCO failings, be it private or LA.

 

Which as i said before, renders it completely pointless.

 

So the summary is, no recourse through bco, and most builders just dont care. If they did, they wouldnt do acrap job in the first place. Someone else will buy the house. No need to worry about your reputation when its already in the gutter.

[ETC]

17 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

They dont need to carry out ANY inspections if they dont want to.

 

They can (and obviously in some cases do) sign it all off from the comfort of their armchair.

 

As the OP is finding out, out in the real world, there is no recourse against BCO failings, be it private or LA.

 

Which as i said before, renders it completely pointless.

 

So the summary is, no recourse through bco, and most builders just dont care. If they did, they wouldnt do acrap job in the first place. Someone else will buy the house. No need to worry about your reputation when its already in the gutter.

Please quote the legislation.

[Roger440]

1 minute ago, ETC said:

Please quote the legislation.

 

For what?

 

 

[ETC]

5 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

For what?

 

 

For BCOs not needing to carry out any inspections if they don’t want to.

Edited November 4, 2023 by ETC

[Roger440]

10 minutes ago, ETC said:

For BCOs not needing to carry out any inspections if they don’t want to.

Where does it say they do?

 

Nowhere is the answer.

 

They can, and do, sign off stuff without seeing it. If they werent, that makes it even worse, ie they have inspected a non compliant job, and STILL signed it off.

 

(my garage foundation prep was done by photos. No inspection took place)

 

Indeed, under the new system, alledgedly to stop developrs only having the first house inspected, they now have to submit photos to the BCO. Why do you think that would be. 

 

Either way, lots of new build and additions to existing houses gets signed off when its blatently non compliant. (see OP's house (and thousands of others) So, you would agree, they either didnt look at it, or they signed it off knowing it to be non compliant.

 

And there nothing the homeowner can do about it.

[saveasteading]

I once forgot to tell the bco we had commenced, and our site manager didn't request inspections of footings. Oops.

 

I sent photographs and confirmed I had seen the holes. He trusted us and said  it was ok. As he said: " your design, your work, your reputation...I'm confident it's ok. But give me pics for my file."

 

Elsewhere I've seen  footings exposed for inspection, and condemned.

[Bozza]

For those who haven’t seen it there is an excellent 2 part BBC documentary “Britain’s housing crisis - what went wrong””on iplayer.  Though not primarily relating to quality issues it’ does cover other issues around major developers.   The entire situation with major developers is just appalling.   
 

[d87francis]

On 05/11/2023 at 10:18, Bozza said:

For those who haven’t seen it there is an excellent 2 part BBC documentary “Britain’s housing crisis - what went wrong””on iplayer.  Though not primarily relating to quality issues it’ does cover other issues around major developers.   The entire situation with major developers is just appalling.   
 

I've watched the first part so far and it is spot on.

 

Reply today from LABC

 

"Thank you kindly for your email to building control. I have taken this off of our administration team so that I can explain a bit more detail.

 

You are correct from your email that the works are normally enforced from a local authority building regulations. For example, if an extension had no application. This would be down to us to enforce as the LABC.

 

We would not be able to govern another building control body, such as xxxx xxxx. If you feel there has been a discrepancy or you wish to further your concerns from your complaint, the CICAIR are the governing body of all approved inspectors within England. Therefore, this would be the port of call to obtain further concern.

 

We would not be in a position to involve ourselves between yourselves and xxxx xxxx for example. I hope this helps xx, and apologies we can not be of more help.

 

Kind Regards"

 

We will refer this onto CICAIR but don't hold any hope of a resolution through those channels.

 

---------------------------------

 

The developer and their main contractor came to visit on Thursday for an appointment specifically to look at the missing insulation. They turned up thinking it was for something else, and end of defect period (EOD) inspection for their main contractor, not our warranty defect period as that runs until July 2024. They have used these EOD inspections for their main contractor to convince most other owners that their defect period is now over, closing the portal with which to report defects and many other residents footing the bill for their own repairs whilst still inside their 24 month defect period.

 

The developer initally lied to us verbally when I questioned them during an earlier defect inspection on how long our defect period is. This is having also phoned us up and aggressively told us we were reporting too many defects through the portal and that they would come visit us and explain what a defect is. Needless to say everything I showed them during the visit they agreed was a defect. I also asked them in writing how long the defect period is which they ignored, but I did get written confirmation from our warranty provider that it is 24 months as opposed to the 12 months our developer was claiming.

 

When they arrived for Thursdays visit they had also lost the list of defects that in March we had previously agreed with them that they were going to rectify. We hadn't taken enough time off work nor organised the house to conduct a broader whole house inspection, so we asked them to rebook but insisted the use our ladder and torch to inspect the insulation in the loft. They took a few photos and said they would look up what should have been there. They wouldn't even go entirely into the loft they just leaned through the hatch for a while. From the March list of 30 odd defects they have so far fixed 1, despite giving us a 28 day timeframe and repeadted emails chasing them.

 

Needless to say we think they are an incompetant and lying bunch of cowboys. I will name and shame once this is all resolved.

 

We've put to the developer we would like them to hire a chartered surveyor, of our choice out of a selection of 3 with no business relationship to them, to draw up a schedule of remediation works for all the main issues with the house (insulation, bowed walls, unlevel screed on ground floor, and significantly creaky floors on 1st and 2nd floor), for the surveyor to also inspect and sign off the remediation works once completed.

 

If they offer anything less we will escalate through their complaints procedure, then the warranty provider and then the financial ombudsman if neccessary. Using the independantant surveyor is one of the resolution models the ombudsman service use, which we have told the developer in the hope they will actually get on with it. However, their main tactics so far seem to be delay and ignore in the hope that owners give up, so we are expecting to have to spend several months escalating this to get any progress.

 

They are frankly a bunch of crooks that thanks to little regulation narrowly stay on the right side of the law. The whole industry needs a shake up.

[Bozza]

Might be an idea to write to your MP, to petition them for changes to housing legislation.  

[larry]

The other dimension here of course is the environmental one. Not just the pointlessness of manufacturing celotex which then  just goes into the loft basically for storage, but the gap between how well we think a building will perform based on design and what happens in practice. Think of the potential extra fuel you'd use over the next 20 years or so whilst being potentially convinced you've got an efficient modern house. Bad workmanship has huge potential to influence the carbon footprint of our housing stock whilst likely also leaving us to get the maths wrong about what that footprint is. The reflections in this thread highlight what a key part good BC processes are to any drive to reduce emissions. 

[joe90]

Frankly it’s just not getting what you paid for, in terms of legal purchase jargon “not fit for purpose “.

[Kelvin]

4 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Frankly it’s just not getting what you paid for, in terms of legal purchase jargon “not fit for purpose “.

Exactly this. 

[kandgmitchell]

On 20/11/2023 at 09:34, joe90 said:

Frankly it’s just not getting what you paid for, in terms of legal purchase jargon “not fit for purpose “.

The trouble is that houses are not "goods" that are required by the Consumer Act to be "fit for purpose" which is why we've ended up with statutory inspectors, warranties and all the rest of it yet still have houses sold with that level of appalling workmanship.