Sutcliffe Cowboy Trap

Hi, I'm Clive Holland,

and I'm on a mission to run those cowboy builders out of town.

I walked in and was absolutely horrified.

The house, basically, was anything but complete.

All over Britain,

people are having their lives ruined by these unscrupulous chancers,

and it's got to stop.

If anything happens to what's left up there,

it's going to have an effect on this house.

And there'll be bricks and rubble

and that coming through the roof, and goodness knows what.

But I've got the good guys in my posse to help give these horror stories a happy ending.

I remember him saying, "I'm not trying to rip you off, Deb."

And with hindsight now, that's absolutely what he was doing.

So do yourself a favour, and take some notes.

Because what you're about to witness could well keep you

out of the cowboy trap.

Today, Cowboy Trap is on the northeast coast,

in the small seaside town of Seaham.

Seaham was once the unlikely home of the mad, bad and dangerous-to-know

poet Byron, who wrote a couple of his most famous poems here.

More recently, Seaham was a mining town,

its harbour shipping coal to London.

But these days, Seaham's main claim to fame is its gorgeous beaches.

Another famous former Seaham resident

is the footballer Paul Gascoigne,

who owned a massive grade II listed mansion here.

And if you remember, Gazza cried in the 1990 World Cup finals

when he was playing for England. But you know what?

Today's cowboy builder story is also enough to make a grown man cry.

Make no mistake, this is a cowboy trap with brass knobs on -

a tale of shameful handiwork, shattered dreams,

and wait for it - a life-threatening piece of bodged structural work

that could quite literally bring the house down.

We're here to meet Debby Sutcliffe,

who works as a manager for voluntary organisations helping people

who have problems with drug and alcohol abuse.

In the last couple of years, Debby has had to fork out £8,000 to

try and fix a bodged build. And her house still isn't right.

She is up to her eyes in the cowboy trap.

In 2009, after a painful divorce,

Debby made the bold decision to move from her home in Scarborough up to Seaham.

It was 70 miles away, and Debby was sad to leave her friends

and family behind.

But she was desperate to start afresh.

Leaving Scarborough and leaving what I was leaving behind in Scarborough,

particularly my friends, it did make it quite important

that the property I bought had the right feel

and location was quite important,

because I was moving totally on my own, with no friends or

family in this area. I needed to feel quite safe and secure.

Debby had a dream.

Divorced and now having to go it alone, she wanted to be

financially secure, and what better way than through bricks and mortar?

After some intensive house hunting, Debby was relieved to find

a place which ticked all the boxes - a two-bedroom terraced house.

It was in need of some serious renovation,

but for Debby, it was love at first sight.

It was very reasonably priced.

It clearly needed some updating, but the good price that it

was gave me the confidence that I'd actually have enough money to be able to do the work.

It gave me the opportunity to put my little stamp on it and make it my little palace.

But transforming it into a palace was going to be no easy task.

Much needed to be done just to bring it up to date - rewiring,

plumbing, a damp course for starters.

And Debby didn't want to stop there.

I wanted the chimney breast taken down in the dining room

and the spare bedroom,

and a garage extension and a porch on the front,

new garage roof, sunroom at the back, the windows that

weren't already double glazed, new windows putting in.

Debby was also keen to reduce heating bills in years to come,

so she wanted insulation throughout.

She wanted part of the garage converted into a utility room.

And the final piece of the jigsaw - plastering throughout

and new doors, door frames and skirting boards.

It was clearly an ambitious project.

Being quite new to the area,

Debby didn't know how to go about finding a reputable builder,

so it came as a great relief when a friend at work suggested her

son, who runs a small building company.

Now, she was really happy with the recommendation

so close to home, and decided not to take up any further references.

Big mistake!

Take my advice - if you're looking for a builder, always

check out examples of their previous work.

This work needs to be a similar job to what you need doing.

The more references from satisfied customers you can get, the better.

Rather than doing that, Debby decided to meet up with the builder

to talk through her dream, and see if she felt he was up to the job.

He talked the talk, everything seemed fine,

and there was nothing that

alerted me, that made me think,

you know, he wouldn't do the job that he said he would do,

and that I hoped he would do.

But then, Debby made another basic error.

Debby let slip that she'd got £40,000 available to get

the work done, and when the builder's quote came in,

guess what - you got it - it was for £40,000. Was that a coincidence?

Of course it wasn't.

Here's my top tip - never tell your builder exactly how much money you've got to play with.

Put the onus on them to come up with a price,

and give you a written quotation.

In fact, my rule of thumb is - get three quotes.

Debby agreed to the £40,000.

And the builder promised

if he started in August it would all be done and dusted by December.

He asked Debby to pay him in four instalments of £10,000,

the first upfront to buy materials.

Debby did as he asked, and moved out into rented accommodation,

because the house was going to be uninhabitable during the build.

When she returned to take a look at their work, her heart sank.

It was the plastering in the dining room - I remember walking in one day when they were here,

and just looking up at the ceiling, and asking if they were drunk when they plastered the ceiling.

And was then told, "Don't get hung up on that - it all smooths out

"when you paint it."

And that was when I knew that things weren't right.

And when she went upstairs to her bedroom, she was gobsmacked.

I actually questioned the windowsill in here,

and was told that I'd asked them to leave it like this.

Believe it or not, this is clean.

And apparently I'd said I liked wood and wanted it leaving.

Debby started to wonder just where her money was going.

There was something in the garage and I clearly had questioned something.

And I remember him saying, "I'm not trying to rip you off, Deb."

And with hindsight now, that's absolutely what he was doing.

But it wasn't just value for money which was a concern -

so was the schedule.

The builder kept on promising he'd be finished on December 23rd like

they agreed, but Debby was convinced he was running behind,

and for her it was a race against the clock.

She was desperate to move in for her dream Christmas.

Fast forward to just three days before Christmas.

The lease was up on Debby's rented house and so she decided to

take a day off work and go and visit the removals men who were

delivering her furnishings to a newly refurbished home.

But I can tell you now - the tidings were far from comfort and joy.

Rather than a palace ready to move into for Christmas,

Debby was faced with a house of horror.

I walked in and was absolutely horrified.

The house, basically, was anything but complete.

There weren't skirting boards in any of the rooms,

there were floorboards up in one of the bedrooms

and at the top of the stairs, which would have made it

impossible for removals to safely have moved furniture up there.

Obviously, carpets couldn't go down because there were no skirting boards,

and the place was just filthy.

The builders had left a total mess,

and neither the electrics nor gas were working.

Debby tried to phone the builder, but he took some tracking down.

I finally got hold of the builders to be told that they'd finished,

that as far as they were concerned they'd completed the works.

Debby couldn't believe her ears - or her eyes.

She'd forked out 40 grand and her home looked like a bomb site.

But with her rental lease up, she had no choice but to move in.

It wasn't the Christmas present she'd been hoping for.

I hope her builder had a nice Christmas,

because Debby certainly didn't.

She spent it all alone on a building site.

I hope I never have to go through that again.

No kitchen, no bathroom, house total shambles - wrecked, really.

I just didn't want anybody coming to the door,

didn't want anybody feeling sorry for me,

and, you know, kind of Christmas Day -

cooking your lunch on a camping stove and a microwave.

Not good.

The builder came back briefly in the new year,

but never looked like finishing the job.

When he had the gall to ask for a further three grand,

it was the final straw.

Debby asked him to leave.

All my hopes and dreams for the house

when I moved in and all the security and safety and financial

security that I was after - I basically got exactly the opposite.

Over the past couple of years, Debby has managed to get

some cash together to repair some of the botched work.

But nothing could repair the damage these guys had done

to her self-esteem.

And I'm worried about that chimney breast they removed -

that's no job for a cowboy.

But first, I need to find out more.

-Aha, you must be Debby.

-I am.

-I'm Clive from Cowboy Trap. How are you?

-Fine, thank you.

Nice to see you. Now I hear you've had problems with cowboy builders.

-D'you mind if I come in, and you can talk me through it?

-Absolutely not.

-Great.

As soon as I stepped through the door, it's clear Debby has spent a lot of money on fixing

the cowboy builder's botched job.

I'd usually come into devastation. Looking at this, it looks fine.

So my question is, in terms of the problems, what's your major?

Well, NOW - one of the reasons that you're here today is

to have a look in the loft, because the chimney breast

had been taken down and it's been left unsupported.

-OK. So chimney breast has come out on two levels?

-Two levels.

And they've left all the masonry floating above?

-Is that what you're saying?

-Yes.

Well, I need to get a closer look at that.

-In terms of the loft, now, I know I'm only a small guy...

-Obviously!

Nine stone wet through. D'you think I'll actually get in there?

I think you'll do it, Clive.

OK, great. Well, listen. If you don't mind, d'you mind sticking the kettle on?

We'll have a cup of tea, then we'll have a chat later.

-But first I want to get up to that loft.

-OK.

-All right. Thanks, Debby.

Joking apart, if you don't remove a chimney breast properly,

it can come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Debby has performed a minor miracle by fixing much of the cosmetic work here.

But she's done the right thing to call for help, because it's the

structural damage that cowboys do that's the most dangerous.

A bit of a tight squeeze.

Oh, yeah! That looks dodgy all right.

Let's take a closer look.

Seems my fears were justified. This needs sorting, and fast.

Oh, look at that. I see.

Now, interestingly enough, they've almost done an inverted V

removing that brickwork there,

so it's displacing the weight either side of the V down onto a

suspended roof joist. It's just floating in mid-air, really, on both sides.

And then they've got a little bit of 2x2 noggin battening at the back,

that seems to be supporting it.

But it's not the way to do things.

Now if you imagine, normally if you're taking a chimney breast out,

you'd take a chimney breast out and you'd take it out

downstairs - above, you'd have it all Acrowed up,

and rather than like that in an inverted V displacing weight either side,

you'd actually get yourself an RSJ - bang - right under the bottom area of where the bedroom is,

to support all that weight of masonry

because there's a few tonne there of brickwork,

and if that was to ever come tumbling down and crashing down,

I think it's Debby's bed that's right under there, or somebody's bed.

Now, you can imagine how dangerous that is going to.

And worse still, it seems the masonry's already on the move.

You can see a slight bit of movement down the right-hand

side there of the inverted V - there's a long crack that

runs for about five feet around the brickwork.

I've got to say, it's certainly not clever.

It looks like we got here just in time.

I've got a horrible feeling Debby made a crucial mistake when this build started.

A mistake which could have cost her her life.

Did you call in building control?

No, I had no idea I needed them in.

I was oblivious of that until the surveyor came the other week.

So, no.

And when the surveyor came, he told you the problem's with?

-The chimney.

-Yeah.

Basically that had been unsupported.

OK, the chances of a lot of masonry come crashing down.

So it just doesn't then come onto finances or emotions?

No, that's life and death.

That comes on to life and death, that's correct.

'Take my advice, chimneys are part of the structure of your house

'and removing them is always a serious business.'

You'll need a structural engineer involved

and approval from building control.

If you do anything to a party wall - that's one you share

with your neighbours - you'll need their consent in writing.

What you've got to understand is, you're employing these people,

and if they do anything wrong you need to broach the subject.

Don't bury your head.

Because if something like this...

You've got an alarm bell right at the beginning - the 40 grand.

I'm telling you now, there'll be mega alarm bells right up to, you know,

great big air horn warning systems going off by the end of the build.

Which is obviously what has happened.

Listen, the main thing is now you know what dangers you've been left with.

We would particularly like to concentrate on that area

of the work, because it is so dangerous.

And we really want to be getting on with that.

If anything, it's for peace of mind.

We're going to get the good guys in.

We're going to address that.

-Can I keep them?

-Of course.

Can I build a little shed for them?

-Of course you can, you can keep them in your garden.

-Thank you.

How's that? But, we're going to... I'll have to ask their permission, of course.

But I'm sure they'll look after you and will get the job done.

But before we get cracking, I want a second opinion from an independent surveyor.

Peter Fall has checked out the chimney,

and now I'm going to pick his brains.

What's not to your liking?

Basically, he's taken away all of the support that held

the chimney breast in the loft space in position.

Let's remember, when that chimney stack was first built,

he built it off a foundation on the ground.

All the load went down on the ground.

He tied it back to the party wall, between the two houses,

just to stop it falling over.

-Not to hold it up.

-Yeah.

So what he's gone and done now, he's taken everything

away between the foundation and the roof and left nothing.

However, not quite nothing.

Because what he did do is put a piece of wood in.

-What he's gone and done, he's rested that on the ceiling joists.

-Yow.

We are big guys.

-Those ceilings are not meant for you and me to ballroom dance on there.

-They're not.

They're meant to hold the plot.

The ceiling joists were never, ever intended to carry the chimney.

To carry that sort of load bear?

So what's he got? He's got it on the ceiling joists it can't cope with,

and he's got nothing else between that

and the foundation underneath the ground floor.

What's the worst case scenario? Just spell it out to us.

In the short-term, the mortar that's literally holding

it in place will gradually degrade with age.

It will slacken, the bricks will become loose,

the load will settle down a bit more on top of the joists.

Until eventually the joists says, "Hey, this is too much weight."

Now, the work you've seen so far, I need a mark out of ten for, as usual.

What sort of score would you give that?

-Oh, Clive.

-I've got a feeling.

You know my scoring system.

I am so depressed when I see this from the building industry.

It isn't normal to see it like this.

He's made a good job of taking it out of the bedroom beneath.

Let's give him two or three points for that, and that's it.

And I might even take one or two points back off him for just not

thinking hard about what he'd done for the bit that's left in the loft.

It's not only Debby that's affected by this chimney travesty.

So is next door neighbour, Kenneth Stockdale.

The chimney joins the two houses together.

I do know that if anything happens to what's left up there,

it's going to have an effect on this house and there will be bricks

and rubble and that coming through the roof, and goodness knows what.

That's a major worry.

And it's not just the chimney that concerns Kenneth.

He is also worried about the impact all the stress has

had on Debby's health.

She's been really depressed.

She really has. And, er...

..how she rises above that,

I don't know, given the circumstances she's in.

She had dreams and those dreams have gone.

But perhaps we can help Debby's dreams get back on track.

Here come our knights in shining armour, led by Joe Dixon.

Time for a powwow about his plan of action.

Just try and describe to us what you intend to do.

So imagine, we've got the inverted V, what do you intend to do?

On the bottom, you see where the chimney breast would have come down in this area here?

Yes.

Above in that area, what they put in is a bit of scrap,

heavy timber, literally resting across...

To me, it only looks like about 2x2?

Yeah, it's poor, it's poor.

We need to look at putting a steel bracket, if you can imagine,

up into there where the chimney breast has come down in that V.

There's a bracket that needs to be put up to support the brickwork

which is protruding approximately 400ml out from there.

So that bracket then takes the bearing.

Listen, Joe, what I'm going to do, I'll leave you to it.

It's great to have the good guys on board.

And then we'll pop back and see how you're getting on.

Brilliant, see you soon.

-I'll let you carry on.

-Thanks, bye.

As an added bonus and a nice little surprise for Debby,

I've also asked John to do some work on her bodged utility room.

How anyone could think this is finished is beyond me.

The plastering is pants, the tiling is shoddy,

and there's that hole in the ceiling.

And don't get me started on the doorway!

And that horrible trunking to the light switch. Eugh!

Joe and his team waste no time getting started.

They get to work on that useless utility room,

and like Santa at Christmas, they head off to the chimney.

The sooner that's fixed, the safer.

Can they secure that stack so Debby can sleep easy at night?

And will their work pass building regulations

so Debby's house gets a belated clean bill of health?

Only time will tell.

I'm back in Seaham on the northeast coast,

where recently-divorced Debby Sutcliffe decided to make

the brave decision to start a new life away from her family and friends.

But her dream home soon turned into the stuff of nightmares,

when the builder she hired to undertake the renovation work turned out to be a cowboy.

Our good guys have now finished their work,

and I'm here to find out if they've saved the day.

Before I talk it through with Debby, I can't resist taking a sneaky peek.

My first destination...the utility room.

Oh yeah, now this looks totally different and really clean and bright.

The walls have obviously been plastered

and there was some horrible trunking down to the light switch which didn't look nice.

That's all been taken away, painted, worktop.

I'm loving the gloss units in here as well,

this is like a proper, working utility room.

And we've got great flooring too.

Skirting boards painted, everything looks really good.

I am liking that.

Pleased about the utility room, but the real proof of the pudding

when assessing our good guys' work lies upstairs.

Now, if you remember the real problem was up in the loft.

We had that inverted V of the chimney breast that wasn't supported.

Potential for all those bricks to fall down.

I'm hoping our guys have done their job properly

and that way we can get building control sign-off.

But the one thing I hate, and maybe you do too, is getting up these lofts.

Particularly today, it's dirty up there and it's hot and sticky.

But anyway, it's important we go and have a look.

Oh, room for a small one.

Wow!

It's immediately apparent, we've closed this particular can of worms.

If you remember, we'd got... All of that masonry on the inverted V was floating in thin air.

Well, it was sort of on a trimmer, but that was doing nothing,

that's a lot of weight of masonry.

Now we've got that steel in place, this is the thing that

building control were concerned about, this whole chimney breast removal.

They want to see exactly that and that will give us the sign-off, I'm pretty sure.

But for me now, that is taking all the weight of that masonry.

And the thing more importantly is,

it's taking the worry away from Debby.

She was sleeping below and always concerned that one day all this might come tumbling down.

Not any more it won't, because that is a job well done.

Phew, what a relief.

Now, before I talk it through with Debby, I want a powwow about her cowboy builder.

I wanted to find out his side of the story.

So I could hear her responses to his version of events.

Unfortunately, that's proved easier said than done.

We've worked really hard to try and track him down, but we've had no luck.

Now, this is rare that we haven't managed to get hold of him.

It interesting because, if I remember rightly,

from when we were doing the chat before, that he was...

-Was he a brother or...?

-A son.

A son of somebody you worked with.

Why do you think we're having the difficulty of tracking him?

I really don't know.

I know he's not trading any more because I did a search for them just before the programme,

and I know that they're listed on Companies House as no longer trading.

Right, OK.

But other than that, I don't know.

We've really had a struggle, I tell you.

And we don't leave any stone unturned when we try and track these guys down.

But to not have any of the numbers working,

he's obviously wanting to disappear.

Because there's got to be a reason.

Anybody that feels they've done a good job would have been there...

-Defending it.

-..defending it.

On this occasion he hasn't.

However, we have had the good guys in to your property

and I can't wait to show you what they are capable of.

Now, we're going from the bad news to the good news.

Good news indeed! Hear all about it.

Now, I can't ask Debby to squeeze into the loft with yours truly,

that would be a denial of her human rights!

So we're going to talk it through in her now-safe bedroom.

Now, Debby, normally at this stage I would be opening a door and going, "Ta-dah."

And we'd be able to see something nice and bright and shiny.

On this occasion it is quite nice, it is quite bright and it is quite shiny,

but all it is is a chunk of metal that is actually holding up

that remnants now of the brickwork from the chimney breast.

It didn't meet building control, it was in breach of building regulations.

But, not any longer.

Our good guys have been in, they've done the job.

And because they've done such a cracking job on this stack,

I have in my hand a piece of paper that guarantees peace of mind in our time.

It's a certificate, but it's important.

It might only be paper, but it's important.

Because this gives you now, this is the regularisation certificate.

And it means now the chimney breast and all of the work that's

been carried out on it, to do all of the remedial works, is now...

There's your certificate and it's no longer in breach of building regs.

I want you to keep hold of that now because it's important.

In the future if you ever sold your property, yeah?

That goes with the new incumbents.

You might not sell it, but at least now you are above board and legal.

Good! That's really good.

I mean, I didn't even know I was supposed to get this, or that the builders were.

Having got it retrospectively, fabulous.

-You're happy with it?

-Yes.

Now that's sorted, we can move on.

Debby has seen the work going on in her utility room,

but now I'm about to reveal the finished results in all their glory.

-That is amazing, isn't it?

-It looks so much bigger, as well.

It's nice, it's got clean lines.

I'm loving the white units, those gloss, white units look fantastic.

And there's no brush marks on the ceiling and all the chunking is all gone.

-Yes, the chunking's gone from the light switch.

-Brilliant, that's great.

-So that looks better, flooring down as well.

-Shiny.

How much of a difference is this going to make now?

You've got a utility room you can actually use as a utility room.

The extra space is great.

-I'm not going to be like, fighting my way between utilities as I was before, so yes.

-Yeah?

And probably going to have to use it now though, aren't I?

I think you are, I definitely think you are.

So, the main thing is now, are you happy?

-You know there are good guy builders out there.

-Mm-hm.

You've just got to search for them.

'Yeah, seek and ye shall find. That's my motto.'

What a great result, that chimney breast is now as safe as houses.

And once again, Debby can sleep soundly at night.

And what about that utility room? It looks a real cracker.

This has been a long and drawn-out saga,

but at least we've got Debby back on track.

And for all you cowboy builders that are watching at home, I've got one thing to say -

I'm fed up of your cock and bull stories and we are coming at ya!

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