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Builder breach of contract, do we still need to...

Posted by Natalie , on
My parents employed a building contractor to build a large random rubble wall surrounding a parking area, a rose bed central to the parking area and cobbies down in a section. The quote for the job was £72K, it would take 5 men 5 weeks of work. They agreed to this and signed a contract to this amount of time. A side note, my parents run a B&B and so didn't take bookings for the five weeks the work was supposed to be going on for to save a poor environment for holiday makers. The work commenced around a year ago now, it was slow going and only 2 men turned up. Some weeks, no one would come, other weeks we would have a maximum four working at the site at any time. Of course, the five weeks were missed. My parents were beyond understanding and continued to pay the installments despite work being well behind. We had to welcome guests back during this work to reduce loss of income, however the building site led to disappointment in our customers. This resulted in a loss of income for my parents. Throughout the work, the owner of the company would text my father that he would be sending me over on X number of days, only for his men to never arrive. He then began making excuses such as not having enough money to buy the sand required for the mortar (my parents had already paid £68K there or thereabouts at this time). At one point he randomly switched his phone off for a week and went on a fishing trip without letting us know. We were in the dark as to who to contact and ask to whether or not the work would ever be done. We're now over a year past the beginning of the work and the wall is still not completed, the central rose bed has been forgotten and we're still waiting for the cobbies to go down. He has messaged my father that he believes it will be finished by this Wednesday and he expects the outstanding payment to be sent by Friday (he has told us many times on many weeks that everything will be finished within the week). He has said he will nro be doing the rose garden. My question is, due to the number of lies, the breach of contract regarding time and amount of work, the loss of income for my parents and the awful attitude from himself, whether we can legally refuse to pay the outstanding or if we have som consumer protection rights where we can refuse to pay?
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