CASE FILE — CLAIM TYPE
Poor Workmanship
Claims against builders, tradespeople, and service providers for substandard work.
Where the customer is a consumer, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 implies a term that services be carried out with reasonable care and skill, within a reasonable time, and — where no price was agreed in advance — for a reasonable price. Where the customer is a business, equivalent terms are implied by the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982. In both cases, the claim is a breach of contract claim: the customer's remedy is the cost of putting the work right, not an automatic refund of the full sum paid, unless the work is so defective that it amounts to no performance at all.
Tradespeople typically respond by disputing that the standard of work fell below what was reasonably required, asserting that defects arose from the customer's own instructions or from pre-existing conditions in the property, or arguing that the customer prevented completion or a snagging visit by refusing access.
Evidence Standard
The claim is built on: the contract or quote setting out the scope of work, dated photographs of the defect, the invoice or proof of payment, and a written record of when the defect was reported to the tradesperson and what response, if any, followed. Where the customer engaged another tradesperson to correct or complete the work, that second invoice is direct evidence of both the defect and its cost to remedy — keep it, and keep the original quote to show the two are for comparable work.
Expert Reports
An independent expert report is required where the defect is not obvious to a layperson — structural work, damp-proofing, electrical or gas installations — and becomes correspondingly more important as the claim value rises. The small claims track caps recoverable expert fees at £750 per expert, and permission from the court is needed before relying on expert evidence at all. For visible, non-technical defects — chipped tiling, uneven paintwork, incomplete finishing — photographic evidence and a second tradesperson's quote for remedial work are usually sufficient without a formal report. Judgments in this category typically track the documented cost of remedial work, most commonly in the range of £200 to £5,000 for domestic trade disputes.