Help my mum who lost home to a scam & storm Debi

Hi all.

My name is Taras, and I’m raising for my mum’s home that’s been destroyed by a cowboy builder and, most recently, by storm Debi.

Over a year ago, my mum (Svitlana/Lana Dampier née Semeniuk) and her ex-partner agreed to have their newly purchased house renovated and extended by someone who used to be their neighbour and had a construction/building company.

When they purchased the house, it had a wall that needed to be addressed, so they decided to put life savings into renovating the house.

Their new home in Milnrow, Rochdale, has been left before completion in an awful state.

It’s a long story of how this happened without a proper contract, as at the time, they thought that the house was being done by someone who has a building company and is willing to work on it.

The builder started working on the site with a team that made good progress. Shortly after, the issues started emerging that were not addressed by the building company. After raising serious concerns, the building company refused to carry on.

This led to an eventual decision to sell the house at a loss to pay off the mortgage.

Unfortunately, very close to the sale on Monday, 13 November, the temporary roof was blown off the house due to the storm Debi. The roof is resting against the neighbour’s house.

The temporary roofing solution ripped out walls of the house when it was blown away in the storm.

Rochdale Council put up a fence to make the site safe to the public. My mum will be invoiced for this service.

The root of this issue is an unprofessional builder who is still allowed to trade. My mum also feels very guilty for making decisions that led to this damage. There was a legal action won against the building company in the county court. However, there's no one to enforce it.

We have some savings but will need money to remove the roof and pay to fix the neighbour’s house. We actually don’t know how much is required, but the ballpark figure is likely to be higher than what we’re trying to raise.

My mum’s insurance provider is trying to get out of having a liability due to the builder’s negligence. You trust someone to work on your house and you have to take full responsibility for their poor actions.

We hope that the house next door has cosmetic damages only rather than structural. Our priority will be to fix the damage caused to the neighbouring property.

My mum is a hardworking and humble person who has been through a lot this year. There's no way we can deal with this without your donations.

Thanks,

Taras