Conversions

Changes to the price of a renovation project that were not agreed to beforehand

Anonymous user 16/03/2024 - 2.36 PM

Hi all, I am nearly finished renovating my house and the time has come to settle up with the builder. We originally agreed a quote of around £50k and this has gone up to around £60k. The contract is apparently a standard JCT contract which states: 1. The price does not include the contractor’s costs of dealing with any unexpected problems. As such problems arrive, they will be discussed and the contractor will carry out a careful inspection will provide an estimate to deal with the problem, which will be noted in the specification. 2. If the customer changes the work details the price will be increased or reduced depending on the changes, the contractor will provide an estimate for any changes to work details. 3. The price for the work shown in the work details, together with all the increases or decreases made to it, will be the total price. 4. The elements of the price that are estimated require more information or investigation and will be confirmed with the client before going ahead. In most cases the prices changes have occurred because I have asked for extra work to be carried out. However, we didn't agree to the price of this work beforehand and it generally seems to be quite high. The price of some existing tasks has also been increased. The price for some of these existing tasks were originally listed as an estimates so some change was expected. Others were agreed to as fixed so shouldn't change in my opinion. In both cases we didn't agree on the price change before the work was carried out. Given that we haven't agreed on any price changes beforehand, how do you think we should decide and agree on a fair price in retrospect? I am thinking of maybe getting another builder to review the prices, not sure if this will be much help though. If this does end up in some kind of adjudication proceeding, how much does this typically cost? Thanks very much!