Couple left out of pocket after builder goes into liquidation

A COUPLE from Henley have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket after a building firm went into liquidation owing them money.

Jenny and Emma Buckham-Hedges should have received more than £20,000 to fix work which was deemed substandard by an independent adjudicator.

But SCM Construction and Maintenance Ltd, trading as SCM Group, of Ipsden, which carried out the work, was wound up before making any payment.

The women have now been told that a settlement is unlikely.

They say it could take them two years to save up to fix the problems, which include a sloping and uneven floor in an upstairs bedroom, inadequate loft insulation to meet building control regulations and damage to new carpets caused by workmen.

A front garden wall is also in urgent need of repointing as it is in danger of collapsing on to a neighbour’s driveway.

The Buckham-Hedges, who have two children, aged five and seven, moved into their semi-detached, two-bedroom house in Watermans Road in 2015, the same year they were married.

In January 2017, they were granted planning permission for a two-storey extension wrapping around the rear and side of the Sixties property.

The extension was for a larger kitchen and utility space on the ground floor and two additional bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

The couple, who both play for Henley Hockey Club’s veteran women’s team, sought five quotes and chose SCM Construction and Maintenance, which wanted £200,000 to carry out the work, because it appeared to offer the best value and seemed from online reviews to have a good reputation.

Work started in March 2017 and was due to finish within four months so the family went to stay with a friend in Reading.

The contractors then encountered unforeseen drainage problems so the deadline was pushed back until the autumn.

The couple say they first began to worry when a boiler and a rear door were wrongly installed but these were easily fixed so they said nothing.

However, there were then more mistakes, including floorboards not being screwed down properly and paint being spilled on carpets.

The builders also left trade waste and cigarette butts in the garden and nails on the floor of one of the children’s bedrooms.

Several tradesmen were pulled off the project and replaced, apparently because the main contractor had a lot of other jobs.

The work was eventually finished in December that year but the Buckham-Hedges refused to release a final payment of £5,000, saying it was not good enough and this was confirmed by a surveyor.

The surveyor’s report recorded faults including:

• The bathroom floor was too flexible, causing cracks in the grout between tiles.

• Several badly aligned doors.

• Cracks and gaps in external brickwork and patches of weak mortar.

The builders returned in October 2018 and worked on and off for five more months but the couple still weren’t happy.

The surveyor returned and agreed more repairs were needed. The remaining faults included:

•Inadequate support for masonry over a new loft entrance.

• A radiator pipe in the master bedroom touching the floor, causing an echoing noise.

• Insufficient lagging above the downstairs utility area.

• Floorboards in a smaller bedroom creaked excessively.

• The concrete beneath the master bedroom floor had been cut into sections and needed replacing.

Jenny Buckham-Hedges, 52, who works for a charity promoting sports coaching, said: “There was a fairly tense atmosphere by this point. One of the company directors told us they hadn’t ‘enjoyed this experience at all’, as though it was their right to enjoy it after all the money we’d given them.

“We felt stressed and disappointed because the property still had so many outstanding issues.”

Negotiations reached an impasse so the couple contacted the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

A RICS adjudicator met both parties in September 2019 and upheld most of the couple’s complaints and ordered the company to carry out the repairs within a “reasonable” timeframe.

SCM Construction and Maintenance contacted the couple to confirm a date to carry out the work in January last year but the women had already asked for a second adjudication as they were tired of waiting.

This time, RICS said the time the company had taken to respond was “unreasonable” and therefore it was in breach of contract. It ordered the company to pay the couple £20,202 to hire another contractor within seven days.

The couple heard nothing so they filed a statutory demand through their solicitor but it made no difference.

The company announced it had entered a voluntary arrangement in April 2020 and began liquidation proceedings in November.

B&C Associates, of London, which handled the liquidation, told the couple that “a dividend to creditors does not appear likely”.

Ms Buckham-Hedges said: “When we heard about the liquidation, we were initially sympathetic and assumed that was why they’d been terse in dealing with us. If they were in financial difficulty, we understood that they wouldn’t have been happy spending more money on something that wasn’t making a profit.

“We even accepted it when they couldn’t pay us because it had been a long, stressful process and we just wanted to put it behind us.

“It’s heartbreaking as we ploughed our life savings into this project. We love the house and know it will be resolved in the end but this was one of the most stressful periods of our lives. It was galling.

“SCM Construction and Maintenance claimed to ‘put the customer at the heart of everything’ but that wasn’t our experience at all.

“We’ve got some amazing contractors on board now and there are plenty in Henley.

“However, we’ll have to spend a hefty amount putting this right and it will cost a lot more than the £5,000 which we kept back.”

SCM Construction and Maintenance was formed as SCM (Wycombe) in September 2010 before changing its name in May 2017.

It changed its name again to Berkshire Builders and Services in July 2020, three months after entering the voluntary arrangement.

The three directors, Lee Simpson, Sue Simpson and Abby Corrigan, all resigned that year.

An entirely separate company called SCM Contractors (Southern) Ltd, formed as SCM (Wallingford) Ltd in August 2010, operates from the same premises in Church Lane with Miss Corrigan as director. Mr Simpson was a director until last July. Miss Corrigan declined to comment.