Mark Harding responds to complaints by neighbours about dodgy conservatories, extensions and conversions. He tries to get offending builders, whom he says are all sole traders, to move the job onto a legal basis.
If they don’t, he prosecutes.
He currently has five cases making their way through Magistrates Court. They include the case of a man he calls Birmingham’s worst builder, who left behind a string of faulty loft conversions and has already been fined £12,000. He was in court again as CM went to press.
But Harding could do a lot more to enforce the Building Regulations if the law was changed. Under the Magistrates Court Act he has only got six months from the date of the offence to get a summons before the court. Sometimes months have gone by before the offence is even reported.
“That’s no time at all,” he complained.
“Once I’ve found out about it, done the interviews, written the letters, taken the photographs, compiled the file as thick as a telephone book, got it off to the solicitors, it’s absolutely no time at all.
“No matter how dangerous the work is, or how wrong it is, we can’t take any enforcement action against the builder, which is why cowboy builders proliferate. We don’t have enough power to do anything about it.
“If ministers are serious about tackling cowboy builders they had better give us proper legal tools,” he said.
Source
Construction Manager
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