A1 Lofts and Extensions

AVOID at all costs. This company ceased trading 2 weeks ago with enormous debts of around £1.7M leaving around 40 families with abandoned projects at various stages of a build/refurb, ranging from no roof, to no back of the house and building sites, and the company is currently going into liquidation. DO NOT TRUST the management - the same man has set this company up again and I would hate for anyone else to go through this level of stress and financial nightmare.

Please do not use this company they have notified all current customers that they have Ceased trading and are in the process of appointing liquidators. The website and phone number is still active and they are taking on business for new work - said under new Director and Management but do you really want your work done by a company that less than 2 weeks agon shut down with £1.7M+ worth of debt and leaving customers without roofs, back rooms etc. Please go else where.

Choosing A1 was the worst mistake of my life. My experience with A1 throughout my build has been nothing short of a nightmare. From a delayed start, to my team changing 4 times to work completely halting on site more than once – I’ve had every disaster you can think of. The worst part though is that I have never had a response to my formal complaints from management. In fact, Steve Mills point blank refuses to talk to me!! Things went from bad to worse in December when it seems A1 stopped paying all of their suppliers. I had the scaffold company visit me at home and threaten to remove the scaffold and then a week later our build team walked off site. And now, 4 weeks on… not a word from management. They are aware that my property is currently unsecured and open to the elements and that my build is woefully delayed but don’t seem to care ONE BIT. The way I have been treated is quite frankly DISGUSTING. If that doesn’t discourage you, it gets worse… I know for certain I am not the only one. I am in active communication with 3 other customers who in turn are talking to 6 others!

AVOID AT ALL COSTS! Our build started over 4 months ago and should have taken 8 weeks max. It is still not finished and now no one is answering phones, builders and suppliers have downed tools and surely insolvency is on the cards. Even if they do come back under new management how they have treated current customers has been abysmal. Builds have been abandoned and no one is letting us know what has happened.

Project due to start this Monday, heard nothing from the company and no one is answering the phones in the office. All calls are being picked up by a message forwarding service who request a call back. Have not been called back once despite calling trhough numerours times. Paid a sizeable 10% deposit with nothing to show for it!

Avoid if you value your sanity. What I was told was a 2 week project to renovate a bathroom is still ongoing after 6 months. It has been a shambles from start to finish with every single element of the job needing to be done at least twice due to poor workmanship. A water pipe was cut at one point causing a flood in the kitchen below. There has been no project management and the level of incompetence of some tradespeople has been staggering. The bathroom was ripped out on 25 June and as I write, on 17 December, the area is still a building site with no plumbing or electrics.

Avoid, especially if you value your sanity. We had the full works in terms of sales, with the owner of the company even making an effort to visit us at home. Once we agreed a price and signed the contract the communication was weak at best, unfortunately our gut instinct from here was correct. The scaffolding was erected on Friday, after which we received a phone call to inform us that they had priced the build incorrectly and it would costs an extra £6000. After careful consideration we decided to proceed, only to be told on the phone on the day they were due to start that the 'office didn't want to work the job any more'. No explanation, nothing. We've requested an email or call from the owner and have been blanked. I have never experienced such appalling service. To not even be given an explanation is unacceptable. Their only good point it that they have refunded our deposit (after much chasing). Luckily we have a back up!

Our home refurbishment and extension are now complete and we are unbelievably happy with the final result. A1 realised our dream. We would recommend them without reservation. Having previously wasted hours and spent too much money with architects and potential builders, we were recommended to consider A1. From the very start, Steve Mills and Rikki-Lee understood our ideas and skilfully suggested possible additions to our project. A1 took control of everything from drawings, planning permission and build, allowing us to feel involved and reassured about our home development. The building team were hard-working, skilled and were always willing to go the extra mile. Ruth and Chris, our project managers were, without doubt, a tremendous asset to the whole project, always available and terribly insightful and knowledgable.

Initially everything went fairly smoothly, Pav was excellent and a hard worker, and Darryl was also keen to help but clearly had too many jobs on and tried to resolve things when he could, then we had issues with the recommended plumbing firm cutting unnecessary holes in our kitchen ceiling and pulling out existing boxed in pipe work, we were then left with no heating which we resolved with our own plumber and a leak into one of the bedrooms, we then discovered a leak into the loft roof and we are still being kept awake by tiles rattling in any wind above 10mph, all in all we felt we were selecting a firm who took all the stress away for us how wrong we were,

It all started so well until we had the A1 recommended plumbers involved in the loft extension. In summary, our 6 week project is now in week 11 with plumbing to ensuite that needs to be completely redone, we have a 5th plumber potentially coming round (at some point) and have been consistently let down by all plumbers involved in project. The first plumber tried to connect a megaflow to our combi boiler, as we're not plumbers we didn't know this was not possible, then he disappeared for a month and would not return calls, texts. 2nd plumber was told by 1st plumber to make excuse and not show up. 3rd plumber got paid by us to not complete the job (he claimed he needed scaffolding removed to finish soil pipes - which was fair enough) then didn't come back once scaffolding was removed. 4th plumber said megaflow needs to be refitted, a ceiling taken down to see what's been done so far and that we need a new boiler (5 days work). He has not come back with a quote in nearly a week. So, good points of actually building loft, electrics, tiling, decorating (which were all excellent quality) marred by the fact we have paid out a lot of money for an incomplete project with no end in sight and a lot of stress and chasing along the way. Also, you need to budget very carfeully for any extras. We still don't know if and when it will be finished and at what cost, as you have to pay in full for scaffolding to be removed, so that plumbing can be finshed (or not), we're over a barrel relying on goodwill of project manager to resolve all outstanding issues. My advice, source your own reputable plumber if you use A1 as I have nothing good to say about the plumbers they've used so far.

The Good: - The subcontractor (Damian) was quick and efficient both in building the loft and in responding to our queries and to emergencies. The Bad: - Design. In the design phase we kept getting designs with no explanation whatsoever. It took a lot of time to ask for even minor modifications. We were never in touch with the actual architect and we could never discuss the project with anyone. WIth no support, in retrospect, we definitely made sub-optimal choices. - Application:. Total chaos. Someone from A1 was in touch with the council and there was a continuous back and forth with no clarity at all about what was OK or not. For sure the council added to the confusion, but we got no guidance at all from A1. What is even worse is that we were locked in into a 4K contract, that meant that if the planning application were to be refused, we would have had to pay A1 the full amount anyway. Ridiculous. - Building: A1's role was basically to collect the money. Perhaps they arranged the materials and scaffolding. I don't really know. In the contract they talk about a "quality inspector" but this inspector is actually the main subcontractor. Ridiculous again. In the sales pitch they talk about the quality of their materials and roofing. All not true. Materials are the same as any other basic loft company. The special roofing technology was not installed. The walls of the loft are just a cheap insulation layer plus wood. They did not do any work on the roof at all, just built the box inside. The "standard" windows were cheap run-of-the-mill PVC double glazed with thick frames. In the rare instances when A1 were involved, chaos ensued. We had a chimney stack that had to be removed. We discussed it during the sale phase. We asked for confirmation that it was included in the price. Of course when it came to actually doing the job A1 forgot to tell the contractors that the chimney had to be preserved, did not include supporting in the structural calculations. Then they come up with a story that the council was fine with us removing the chimney. When I asked for written confirmation from the council, they changed their story, and suggested we built a fake replica. Which they did. They tried to have us pay for the replica extra but luckily I had kept the e-mails where they confirmed they would take care of it. The replica by the way looks nothing like the original chimney. It's basically a box. We were clear again from the sales pitch that we had to install a misting system on the ground floor. We also told the contractors. Of course nobody did anything to contact the misting system company until we pushed A1 for it. A1 had the contact of just one company, that they just started working with. So we had to look for extra quotes ourselves. Thankfully the contractor coordinated well with them. - The end result: just a run-of-the-mill loft conversion for about 10K extra compared to the competitors. I was fooled by the promises of quality. Don't make the same mistake. Some examples: stairs are really small, the supporting steel for the loft protruding from the wall into the stairs, making the stairs ultra tight, the hatch doors are not insulated at all and started creaking from day one, the windows are way smaller than they could be even if they promised to install the largest that would fit, the sockets are completely not insulated at the back.

Overall we had a great experience. Our team of builders was fantastic, couldn't have asked for better. The office side could've been a bit more organised, efficient and better equipped when dealing with issues.