"David" wrote in message
om...
"J. Allan" wrote in message
. au...
"David Green" wrote in message
om
Please can anyone help restore my sanity?

We are over six months into building an extension to our home. The
small local builder we engaged to do the job said it would be finished
in 5 months, and signed a contract to that effect.

lots of really good advice from others snipped

snip I would strongly advise the 'pleading, cajoling' route rather than
getting heavy-handed; use the legal route as an absolute last resort.
I think you're unlikely to get a good result that way. You say the
guy is a small builder (like mine was) and that he's slow to pay his
subbies (like mine was). Turned out my bloke was about 50p away from
bankruptcy; he'd been stiffed on an earlier job and had been diverting
funds from my project to pay off the previous one, and once I said
'enough is enough', ie stopped the staged payments because not enough
work was being done, he wasn't interested any more. Which may be
where you are. Problem is if you try to sue him, you'll may well find
he has no cash or assets worth anything, and you may win, but all you
do is force him into bankruptcy and have to cover not only the rest of
the building work but also legal costs too.
snip

Cash flow does seem to be a likely cause of the problem.
One other thing you might try is to change your builder's role from overall
contractor and paymaster to site foreman and builder.
If you undertake to pay the sub-contractors directly you could avoid the
history of payment problems between the builder and the subbies.
This gives the builder an incentive to complete the work, to take his profit
from the job, and also gives the sub-contractors confidence that they will
be paid for their work. Pay them promptly in cash and the word will get
around :-)
This involves you doing some of the management that you were paying the
builder for, but might let you complete the work to the original budget.
You may also have to pay for building materials directly as a builder who
cannot pay his subbies is probably also struggling to pay the builders
merchants.
I guess you would also need to get a written agreement to the changes in
procedure and an agreement that 'time was of the essence' and that if the
work was not completed in a reasonable time then all bets were off.
Bottom line is that you do not pay any more money directly to the builder
until the work is completed, but you allow him to schedule in
sub-contractors and specify materials to be ordered. If pushed you could pay
him a small amount for time spent doing constructive things on site but hold
back most of the remaining money as the carrot to complete the work quickly.
If he can see an achievable result in a reasonably short time you could go
back to the top of his list for resource.
I would also suggest a visit to your local Citizens Advice Bureau where you
can get good advice and quite often a free chat with a solicitor.

HTH
Dave R