Hi County claim against builder who was dismissed after several

verbal warnings and e mails re quality of work and failure to provide any invoices. Concreting of over sites and footings, he charged 30k as first staged payment and kept pestering me for further payments within 2weeks of making first payment without having completed the first stage.
His work was of a poor standard and had to be dug up and redone by another builder subsequently. A real nightmare causing delays for me.I filed a county court claim for 10k as the works would have costed less than 15k out of 30k paid to him. I obtained written quotes from 2 other builders for costs of concreting the footing and digging footings.They had to redo most of his work.

Claim got allocated to small claims track, builder filed a counter claim for loss of
earnings for a large sum , claim got allocated to fast track. We are at the stage of talking about mediation.
I understand the Builder is funding claim through insurance.
1 workman I contacted confirmed he hasn't been paid by the builder yet(3 months after builders contract was terminated and after he has been claiming that he has used up almost all my money on labour charges.)

He also states he has paid monies to his daughter who is a builders labourers(she was never seen on site and not physically capable of doing a labourers job). Claim is against builder and his daughter. She sent pp'd contracts on his behalf and vigorously convinced us to part with large sum of money stating it will be used to buy materials for our house-but was spent on labour charges.

He has provided a 1 page contract 6 months retrospectively showing she is a builders labourer since last 3 years and his employee and that her work includes collecting deliveries and paper work, admin and ordering materials!

He also claimed digger and hire of a man costed £6500, digger was on site for less than 2 weeks , an invoice has been provided from a firm with no clarification re dates or period this relates to.

He has provided a time sheet but no evidence of payments to 6 labourers(I saw only 2 labourers on all days)


JCT contract was in place

I did not give him written warning 1week before contract but several emails before expressing concern re his work and that he is using up a large chunck of money on concreting and that there won't be enough left to complete the house.


Any advice or suggestions?

I havent employed a solicitor due to costs involved and I feel that counterclaim is baseless and frivolous to force me to drop the claim(soothing he has said to a neighbour!)

1)How do I make sure each labourer has been paid what he claims he has(I know he hasn't , one of them has confirmed he hasn't been paid). How do I confirm if they have been employed by him

2)His daughter works for him(allegedly) she has been responsible for our financial loss and has been acting as his business partner rather than a labourer.

Are we supposed to pay for people doing admin work for the builder? I have 1 page contract from him re her employment-no way to verify if this was written retrospectively and if she is being paid what he claims.How do I find out if she is paid by him and that she has worked. He has provided a time sheet typed 5-6 months after the termination of contract showing amounts he has paid himself his daughter and others. I do not live on this site


I don't think I should be paying for his daughter for his admin work , nothing about this in JCT building contract contract.

3)How can I request the digger and dumper hire man to provide a statement to clarify number of hours and days worked on my site for £6500+vat charged for some digging work-seems like excessive payment. His invoice just says £6500+VAT paid on 21/11/13 with my property address. I know he hasn't worked on site for 4-6weeks as there wasn't a digger required for this duration.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have managed to keep my legal costs down by drafting letters from legal books purchased on amazon and am convinced that the builder is providing false statements but it is for me to prove this now.