In a Dispute With Your Builder? What to Do — and What Not to Do

This article is adapted from Chapter 8 of Your Seven Step Home Extension Plan by Ashton Paul — the book that shows homeowners how to manage a project and avoid the stresses and strains of the home extension process.

Two numbers from the book set the scene. Around 85,000 complaints are made about building work in homes each year, according to the Office of Fair Trading — and some £260 million of unsatisfactory and shoddy building work is reported every year in the UK. Problems with builders are not rare, and they're not a personal failing. What separates a bad fortnight from a ruinous six months is almost always how early — and how calmly — the problem gets handled.

Assumptions: where most disputes are born

Most disputes don't start with villainy. They start with the word assumed.

"I assumed you could move the gas pipes, and I also assumed the air conditioning was included." A client genuinely said that to Paul — and found himself with a six-week delay and a claim for £12,000 extra, on a project where £4,500 of project management would have prevented the lot. If you approach a building project in a casual frame of mind, you may get what you deserve. Harsh? So is a £12,000 unexpected bill. You aren't assembling flat-pack furniture; you're in a legal contract for structural works to your largest asset.

Assumptions run the other way too. Pricing the removal of an existing concrete floor, a builder will reasonably assume it's 100mm thick and unreinforced — if it turns out thicker, or reinforced with steel, the break-out cost roughly doubles. Experienced builders quietly carry a buffer of a couple of thousand pounds for exactly these surprises, absorb the small ones, and appear generous doing it. Better than either silent assumption is a conversation: Have you allowed for moving the gas? Is the air conditioning included? Grey areas cost money. Ask the little questions while they're still little.

Address the issue — the crisp packet principle

Often the biggest hurdle is admitting you have a problem. If something is irritating you and it keeps sitting in your mind, it needs addressing before it becomes a problem — no matter how small it looks.

The book's most famous example is a crisp packet. During Paul's own extension, one of the builders finished lunch and tossed his crisp packet into the open floor void — the void that good practice says must be cleared of debris before the floorboards go down. Paul's wife spotted it; Paul mentioned it to his builder, Eddie, the next morning and was assured all would be cleared. That afternoon the builders ushered Mrs Paul in to announce that "Gary Lineker had paid a visit and was trapped under the floor" — half a dozen Walkers packets now artfully arranged in the void, the team grinning.

Funny — and instructive. It was a trivial issue, raised early, acknowledged, and (after the comedy) resolved, with the ground rules quietly reinforced. That's the pattern. Treat minor complaints as practice for the bigger conversations you might otherwise duck. If you'll raise a crisp packet, you'll raise a structural concern.

And there's a proven structure for it: a weekly meeting, ideally not on a Friday (too late in the week to fix anything), with an agenda item near the end called minor frustrations or housekeeping. A good builder will happily listen and action the list, because he knows it keeps the environment positive. If he gets annoyed at the concept, you've learned something important about your builder.

The three-strike rule

For recurring niggles, the book's rule is simple: let it go once, note it twice, and on the third occurrence have a considered chat. The word considered is doing the work — by strike three you've built up momentum, and an explosion will backfire, because from the builder's side it looks like you ignored two non-events and then detonated. He may not even know you're irritated. Mark the card; don't go for the throat.

The same discipline applies to your own reactions under pressure. Paul's habit when a change or problem lands on site: don't decide on the spot. Step away, research, take a cup of tea and a chocolate bar's worth of perspective — even get a second opinion — because ambiguity in construction is expensive, and pressured decisions are how you buy it. The three R's that divorce counsellors talk about — resistance, resentment, rejection — describe failing building relationships just as well. Talk early, or drift towards divorce.

Trust your instincts — the walnut floor test

Towards the end of his own project — dust-weary, finish line in sight — Paul nearly talked himself into accepting a strip of walnut flooring five shades lighter than the rest, laid right in the lounge doorway. He was mentally rearranging furniture over it when his wife walked out of the room in tears — and the builders immediately started stripping it up. It would have stuck out like a sore thumb forever.

That's the mechanism to watch in yourself: instinct flags the problem, then your tired, conditioned brain hunts for reasons to accept something you know is substandard. If a detail is nagging at you, that is the signal. Which is also why you should listen carefully to what a builder's reluctance means. When a builder says something "can't be done", it usually can — at a cost. The real reasons he doesn't want to, per the book: he's priced too tight and fears losing money; he wants to finish and move on; he lacks the technical ability; the work is out of sequence; or it's a major change — and builders hate change.

Don't let it get personal — it's business

A potential client once told Paul: "It's no longer about the money — it's a matter of principle." Alarm bells. All the man actually wanted, in his own words, was to "screw the builder" — and since a biased report stands up in neither arbitration nor court, there was no honest way to take his money. As far as Paul knows, the matter was never resolved.

Contractual disputes are chaotic, expensive things. Nobody exits fully vindicated; professional and legal advice costs serious money; and the formal routes — mediation, adjudication and arbitration, which the industry created precisely because court is worse — are still slow and draining. Paul has represented a client at arbitration exactly once and came away convinced the process is designed to wear both sides down and test the depth of their pockets before finding a compromise. Prevention isn't just better than cure; it's dramatically cheaper.

So keep your business head on. There are usually two sides to every story, and in Paul's experience of unpicking building disputes, neither party is ever entirely free of blame — often both are too proud to admit their error. The translations that decide outcomes are painfully simple:

• "I told him" should be: "I confirmed it in writing."
• "He gave me a price over the phone" should be: a written contract.
• "He emailed me some prices" should be: written, priced variations.

If your records are a fragmented trail of calls and emails, expect an advisor to charge around £1,000 just to read everything, visit site and report — then more, with no guaranteed solution. A well-kept project diary and proper contract is the difference between a short, cheap engagement and an expensive archaeology dig.

Terminating the contract: the last resort, taken with advice

Sometimes the hardest decision is to cut your losses — and most people struggle on well past that point. One of Paul's saddest examples: a pregnant client who felt she couldn't confront her builder because she needed the loft finished before the baby arrived. The works finished seven weeks late anyway. And whenever someone says "we've paid them too much money to pull out now", what they're describing is money paid up front — leverage handed away at the start.

Know this before you act: terminating a builder's contract is not straightforward, and you should get professional advice before withholding money or ending it. Stopping is accepted to be more expensive than continuing well: a new builder must check and often re-do work, will price the risk of certifying someone else's workmanship, and will not hurry. It takes time — sometimes months. If you are holding a proper retention and your records are good, your position transforms: Paul has terminated a non-performing builder's contract for a client precisely because enough money had been withheld to pay someone else to finish. That's what the payment structure in our cost control guide is for.

And if it's a genuine cowboy — one who never intended to finish, only to reach the point where you're forced to get rid of him so he can tie you up in cost claims — then the paperwork you kept is your whole case.

The problems checklist

From the end of Chapter 8:

• Check what's included in the quote — never assume
• Agree dispute resolution in advance, and never have to use it
• Keep a project diary
• Address issues and handle irritations early — avoid the dispute entirely
• Apply the three-strike rule
• If you don't understand something, ask
• Problems left alone get more expensive
• Know when the situation is lost

Almost every dispute we're asked about traces back to steps that were skipped months earlier — the contract, the specification, the retention, the management habits. That's the gap our surveyor-led design and build service closes, and it's the whole argument of Your Seven Step Home Extension Plan (£12.99).