I lost £200,000 to a ‘cowboy’ builder

An image collage containing 3 images, Image 1 shows Couple stands outside their unfinished house, Image 2 shows Unfinished home interior with exposed pipes and wiring, Image 3 shows Unfinished wooden staircase in a house under construction

A MUM has had her life ruined after “cowboy builders”; took nearly £200,000 for a home renovation – and still haven’t finished two years later.

Daksha Patel and husband Mukand Patel hired a construction firm to complete the extensive project in Ilford, North London, before it was outsourced to a subcontractor.

Couple stands outside their unfinished house. — Mukand and Daksha Patel have spent nearly £200,000 on their home renovation

Woman in a Puma sweatshirt stands in a hallway of an unfinished home. — The work has been ongoing for two years and is still not complete

Unfinished room cluttered with building materials and supplies. — The couple have almost no money left and the builders are allegedly demanding more funds

The project is nowhere near completion and they have almost no money left, with one subcontractor allegedly threatening to damage the semi-detached property if he’s not paid the money he’s owed.

The Patels, who have two teenage children, have been mostly living in one room for months, and have been forced to use kitchen facilities in an outhouse, including during the freezing winter.

Daksha has also been injured after falling while trying to move around the home as she says the builders have failed to abide by proper health and safety procedures.

“All my money is gone,”; she told the Sun in tears. “We have been so stupid with this, agreeing to pay bit by bit.

“I was crying like hell. I was praying so hard, I don’t know what to do, where to go. I was feeling suicidal, I’m just fed up with this.”;

Daksha – who moved to the UK 25 years ago – runs an off-licence shop in Bermondsey, South London, and she, her husband, son and daughter previously lived in a flat above it.

However, they were gifted the semi-detached home by her sister-in-law in 2023, though it needed a lot of work to make it liveable.

They took out a re-mortgage of £208,000 in order to pay for the revamp, with the project initially due to take six months.

Daksha paid a building firm a deposit of £60,000 to begin and the work was then subcontracted out to a third party builder.

He has already run up an estimated bill of £184,000 but the work is barely half complete, and he owes money to other workers he’s subsequently outsourced to.

Daksha and her family rented a property in Seven Sisters for a year and a half, costing £2,000 a month in rent, on top of the £1,800 mortgage on the Ilford home, not including bills and council tax.

She explained: “The builder is never on site. He says he hasn’t got enough money left to carry on.

“He keeps repeating he needs another £22,000, that’s all he ever says. We’ve stopped paying until he starts doing work.

“It’s not a hundred or two hundred pounds, it’s thousands of pounds.

“There’s loads to do, most of the home is unliveable. The work that is done is shoddy, the finishing is horrible.”;

Daksha said the builder went to Albania for an extended break over Christmas.

She went on to say: “The man doing the roofing is really angry and he wants money from us.

“I said ‘my contract is with the builder, nothing to do with you’. He has threatened to smash this place. It is really scary.”;

Daksha also had to hire another trader separately to fit the boiler so the family had central heating over the winter after they moved in from the rental property last year.

“I tried to call the council but nobody replies... I’ve got no money to take legal action,” she said.

“Mentally they are torturing us – they are playing a very smart game.

“I told him (the builder) I’m going to report him but he said I don’t care. They know this country’s regulations in and out.”;

She added: “We are living in distress, depression, the whole house is in a mess.

“I was suicidal, I tried to kill myself but luckily my husband supported me.

“We work so hard, seven days a week 70 or 80 hours to build up the property and suddenly someone has come and messed up your whole life.

“If Keir Starmer can make a law to punish the rioters immediately, he can do something to protect people against builders like these.

“Protect hard earners and ensure they don’t suffer. People making an honest income are suffering so much in this country.

“I went through hell, I don’t want anyone to go through the same problem I went through.”;

Have you also fallen victim to cowboy builders? Email [email protected]

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