The owe my company £60,000. I've been in business 35 years, and this has never happened to us before. The first payment came through fine. But subsequently, they've dangled a carrot in front of us. My men are great at what they do, their work is flawless and they've won awards for work they've done before. But then it came to a point where we would do the work on the houses, and then CPUK would have electricians and plumbers go in afterwards to alter things, then we were countercharged and refused payment because the plastering work wasn't done to a high enough standard. So, obviously if someone goes in and knocks holes in the walls after you're done plastering it's pretty obvious that that will be the case. This has gone on and on until recently we recieved countercharging fees dating back to January that means we won't get paid at all. Countercharging fees include "hiring extra security on the weekend while we work" ( CPUK's security is already there 24/7 ) "fees for stationary, paperwork and faxing" ( apparently since January they've used £5000 worth of office materials in correspondence to us ) and the past 3 weeks they've countercharged £10,000 a week!!! They claim that we were 3 weeks behind schedule, and as such have said we owe £10,000 for every week we are behind. But, we weren't able to carry out the work, as the houses weren't ready for us. After investigating further, we found that CPUK is subcontracting for Hillcrest homes, and CPUK themselves are 40 weeks behind schedule. It's a terrible situation, and we are seeing an arbitrary on Tuesday to see where we stand in terms of hiring a lawyer to fight for us. Like we say, we have a couple of plumbers and joiners that are in a similar predicament, but not the the extreme cost that we are. One site forman who kicked up a fuss on our behalf was fired ( he's just started proceedings for unfair dismissal ) and he's subsequently recieved a threatening letter saying that "If he talks about that business or divuldges any information about CPUK" that he will be taken to court... The situation is really horrible... They're such a huge firm, and we really need help dealing with them.
