Reasonable care and skill is the legal floor. Speak to Kestrel.
Building work must be carried out with reasonable care and skill, in reasonable time, and at a reasonable price where none was fixed. Defective work must be put right or paid for; an abandoned job entitles you to the cost of completion by others. The winning moves are an independent report, one written chance to fix, and a claim built on the difference between what was promised and what stands in your house.
The Consumer Rights Act implies into every consumer building contract that the service is performed with reasonable care and skill. Work falling short must be redone at no extra cost or, where that is impossible or the trust has gone, compensated by the cost of another contractor putting it right. Materials must also be of satisfactory quality.
Where no time was agreed, work must finish in a reasonable time; abandonment is a breach entitling you to complete elsewhere and claim the difference. A quote generally binds as the price; an estimate is a genuine forecast that cannot quietly double without agreement. Substantial deposits are recoverable where nothing or little was delivered.
Two force multipliers: deposits or stage payments made on a credit card can engage section 75 against the card issuer for the whole loss on qualifying sums, and membership of trade schemes can offer ADR. Structural danger changes the register entirely: building control and an engineer come before letters.
Guide edition: August 2026. General information for England and Wales. Current law and your particular facts require assessment before action.
Photograph and video everything before anyone touches it. Keep the quote, invoices, messages and payment records together.
A surveyor or independent tradesperson lists defects and prices remediation. This document runs the whole case.
Where trust survives: a letter requiring specified fixes by a date. Where it does not: a letter before claim for the remediation cost.
Card issuer under section 75, trade scheme ADR, or the county court. Most builder disputes settle when the report and the letter arrive together.
Tell Kestrel what happened. The AI legal assistant gathers the facts and prepares a summary for you to check. Request lawyer review from your Legal Centre.
Speak to Kestrel nowSix years from the breach for contract claims. Card chargeback windows are far shorter. Danger to the structure is a today problem: safety first, then the paper war.
This guide concerns Consumer disputes. It forms part of our reference library. Kestrel is preparing for SRA authorisation. See practice details for the proposed service and current availability.
Abandonment is breach. Document the state of the works, get completion priced independently, and claim the extra cost of finishing over the original price, plus losses the delay caused.
A quote is generally the price. Extras only bind where genuinely instructed, and mid-job price pressure on a part-paid project is a recognised tactic, not a right. Put the position in writing before paying another pound.
That instinct is what the independent report answers. Hidden defects, missing membranes, undersized joists, unsafe electrics, are the expensive kind. A few hundred pounds of survey routinely finds the case or ends the worry.
On qualifying amounts, section 75 makes the card issuer jointly liable for the builder's breach, reachable even if he has vanished or folded. Claim to the issuer in writing with the report attached.
Start with the AI legal assistant, then follow the case, messages and lawyer review in your Legal Centre.
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