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Taking builders to court
Hello
As you can see, I am new here as I've only just found this forum. Wishing I'd found it sooner as read over a lot of threads and seems there are some great people giving some great advice!
Anyway, I'm posting this as my husband and I are in the process of taking our builders to court - to cut a long story short a 10 week build got to over 30 weeks, we gave them (in writing, via email) extensions under duress to get it finished 4 times, which they never met, so eventually we asked them to leave. Since then we've had outside professionals in, one of which (electricians) condemned a lot of the work our builders had done and discovered they hadn't earthed anything in the house (they covered over the old earthing rod and never installed another).
Currently we've been through the useless 1 hour mediation, where the builders just denied doing anything wrong and are counter-claiming against us for their last payment (we paid in instalments). So we're now waiting for a court date.
My main worry is that we never had a "proper" contract. We have emails, within which we have the builders confirming the original 10 week build schedule and the price of the job, accept the plans we had drawn up etc. My husband says this will stand up in court. What do you all think? I'm just worried we may not have a leg to stand on as there's nothing signed as such.... do emails count? And if we have professionals willing to stand up in court and say the work was the worst they'd ever seen... surely we should win? I've never been through anything like this and it's worrying the hell out of me!
Thanks for listening to my ramblings and I am sure I need to clarify things but wanted to get the gist of my "problem" onto the forum for advice!!
As you can see, I am new here as I've only just found this forum. Wishing I'd found it sooner as read over a lot of threads and seems there are some great people giving some great advice!
Anyway, I'm posting this as my husband and I are in the process of taking our builders to court - to cut a long story short a 10 week build got to over 30 weeks, we gave them (in writing, via email) extensions under duress to get it finished 4 times, which they never met, so eventually we asked them to leave. Since then we've had outside professionals in, one of which (electricians) condemned a lot of the work our builders had done and discovered they hadn't earthed anything in the house (they covered over the old earthing rod and never installed another).
Currently we've been through the useless 1 hour mediation, where the builders just denied doing anything wrong and are counter-claiming against us for their last payment (we paid in instalments). So we're now waiting for a court date.
My main worry is that we never had a "proper" contract. We have emails, within which we have the builders confirming the original 10 week build schedule and the price of the job, accept the plans we had drawn up etc. My husband says this will stand up in court. What do you all think? I'm just worried we may not have a leg to stand on as there's nothing signed as such.... do emails count? And if we have professionals willing to stand up in court and say the work was the worst they'd ever seen... surely we should win? I've never been through anything like this and it's worrying the hell out of me!
Thanks for listening to my ramblings and I am sure I need to clarify things but wanted to get the gist of my "problem" onto the forum for advice!!
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