Incompetent Plumber and SNIPEF

[Joe Martin]

Over the last year we have had a plumber do several jobs for us. We initially (stupidly) paid him £8,000 and last October he tried to charge us a further £18,000. He has left us with work that needs to be put right and it appears that he has done work that didn’t need doing in the first place because he advised us that it did need to be done.
He threatened to take us to court as we refused to pay him more than a further £7,500. On the advice of another plumber we took the case to SNIPEF (as he is a member of this organisation) back at the beginning of November.    There were two panel meetings before they decided that the work probably did not meet building regulations or best practice. The plumber appealed this decision so we then had to wait for a further panel meeting. This panel meeting rejected the appeal and made this decision final. We then had to wait a further four weeks for an inspection by the SNIPEF appointed technical advisor. Two days before this inspection was due to take place we got home on the evening to find a message left on our answer machine informing us that the plumber would also be in attendance. We phoned SNIPEF the following morning (by now the eve of the inspection) to stress to them that we would not have this man back on our premises under any circumstances. They had already been made aware several times that we would not be allowing this plumber back on our premises, we had even put it in writing back in November. Also there had been no mention at all that they would insist on the plumber being in attendance until two days before the inspection was due to take place. We advised them that we would be amenable to a representative of the plumber attending but not the man himself. Because we refused admission to the offending plumber, this long-awaited inspection was cancelled by SNIPEF. This morning we received a letter from SNIPEF informing us there was nothing else they could do and that the case was closed. So it has basically taken them six months to do NOTHING.
Does anyone know where we would stand if we tried to take SNIPEF to court for causing us all this wasted time and further unnecessary distress.   We contacted a surveyor who gave us the details of a specialist in the field. This man attended and inspected the work on Friday and is now in the process of preparing a report for us. Would we be able to claim these costs back from SNIPEF?
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

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