help! builders messed up driveway

A question about : help! builders messed up driveway

Hi

After a lot of research, we finally got a new driveway to replace cracked up concrete/dried out front garden. We have some issues with this (old) house - small drive/front garden slopes back towards the house, nowhere to put a soakaway/no way of going into public drain - but we were determined to get the drive done in a way that didn't affect the structure of the house (ie sorted drainage properly, didn't risk damp) and that met building regs (I know you don't need building regs for a new drive, but when we sell I wanted the survey to not pull up anything dodgy).

We went for a reputable local company who are Marshalls and Bretts approved traders.

Anyway, the issue is that they've built up the driveway/path too high at the front of the house - whereas before it was just about compliant with building regs (150mm between ground and bottom of damp course, one brick height between bottom of air brick and ground), now the path at the front of the house is at the bottom of the air brick so the airt brick is at ground loevel (not good) and there's only 60mm between ground and bottom of damp proof course.

I can see why they've done it - they wanted the water to slope away from the house into the lawn. But I think that a) they really should have discussed their plans with us before breaking building regs b) they should have made suggestions to mitigate some of the problems - e.g. French drain, making law lower so path could be lower. They dug up our entire front garden so they had the opportunity to do such things without hassle!

Anyway, they finished late on Saturday. We spent yesterday frantically googling and decided that it really isn't on to leave it like this. We haven't paid them yet. Any suggestions for what we can do? I will email them to (politely) explain our concerns and ask them to fix - but presuming they refuse, what rights do we have?

Sorry for incredibly long post. Any help would be great.

Thanks, L

PS I'm cross posting this because I think it went in the wrong forum before.

Best answers:

• Did you got a good company?