Cowboy Builders Season 3, Episode 5: Doncaster

Cardiff

This week Dom and Sheree are on the outskirts of Cardiff, helping a family who have been left to freeze and live in a half-finished extension with no central heating for three years. Care-worker Julia wanted to extend her home to make room for her ageing mother Mary, who had just returned from living in Australia after having a heart-attack. She contracted a builder, the son of someone she thought was a friend, and paid him £64,000 to build a two storey wraparound extension. Six months later, the builder left the job, taking all her life savings and leaving Julia, her mother Mary and her teenage son Chris with an open shell of a home. While Sheree struggles to make her budget stretch far enough to finish this massive job, Dom investigates the cowboy and discovers he may have fled to Thailand. He also meets other victims of the same builder, including a man whose life has fallen apart after the builder left his sewage system leaking into his garden.

60 min

Twickenham

60 min

Leicester

Bhavner and her husband Kirit had always known that they would need to extend their small family home when their three sons were too old to share a room. The extension would prove costly for a travel agent and a shop assistant, costing the couple some £30,000. “My dream was that all three children could have a room to themselves,” Kirit says. In 2007, the couple contacted a builder with a good reputation within Leicester’s Asian community. But the unscrupulous charlatan left the family with a garden that looked like a warzone. Instead of the planned lounge, bedroom and bathroom, he erected four walls and left the extension with no roof, no floor and no plumbing. To make space for his shoddy workmanship, he knocked down the family conservatory and damaged the existing roof, leaving a life-threatening stretch of live wires and sockets exposed to the elements. Bhavner began to suffer from panic attacks as her family spent two winters in an unfinished house, taking turns to spend the night on the floor. Dom is determined to bring the builder to justice, but he is nowhere to be found, and has been operating under multiple company names. As Dom meets up with some of the builder’s other victims, he begins to build up a picture of the man. The cowboy has burned through Leicester’s Asian community, taking people’s money and leaving a mess of unfinished, dangerous workmanship in his wake. One 76-year-old customer borrowed money from his family and cashed in his pension to pay for a kitchen extension. The job was left unfinished and the gas disconnected, with the pensioner left to rely on his neighbours for six months. Dom also meets Ash, who suspects that the builder is trying to scam as many people as possible before he flees the country to live with his wife in India. Sheree is determined to give Bhavner and Kirit the home they paid for, but new project manager John is worried that it could strain his resources. The team allocates a whopping £22,000 to the project, almost all of which will be spent on building work. Sheree is left to round up furniture donations from local vendors. Once the extension has been completed, there will be 500 square feet to decorate, so Sheree turns on the charm and heads to town to find a deal. Despite her reservations, she has big plans for the place. “This family are not going to know what hit them,” she says. “It is going to be fabulous.” Dom is on edge. Despite a seemingly never-ending trail of victims, he can’t track down the renegade builder. If the cowboy has left for India, the game could already be up. Dom finally tracks down a former neighbour, who claims to have seen the dodgy builder a few days ago. With the culprit still in Britain, there is still hope to bring him to justice. “The net is drawing in,” Dom declares...

60 min

Rugby

Dominic Littlewood and Sheree Murphy continue to track down renegade builders and rescue their unfortunate victims. This week, the pair head to Warwickshire to assist the Collins family. While Dominic embarks on an investigation to track down the cowboy, Sheree works tirelessly to rebuild the family home until it is once again a happy and safe place to live. This week, it is as clear as ever that the damage caused by rogue builders runs far deeper than bad workmanship. In Warwickshire, Rob and Wendy Collins have had their home wrecked and their lives put at risk by an unscrupulous builder. Having been plunged into debt and lost countless nights of sleep over the state of their property, the couple do not know where to turn. Luckily, Dominic and Sheree are on hand to help. “She fixes the houses, I chase the bad guys,” explains Dom. Upon arrival at the scaffold-ridden home, builder John takes a look around the loft conversion, which the couple had hoped would improve their lives by affording them more space. Instead, they have been left with trapped electrical wires that pose a serious fire risk, a vital supporting beam that is too small to bear the weight of the roof, and a fragile floor that threatens to cave in on daughter Amber’s bedroom. In fact, Rob’s cardboard model of the desired loft room is in better shape than the actual building. Without further delay, the family moves out and the team begins the mammoth task of rebuilding the botched conversion. After salvaging what they can of the half-constructed floor, the builders get stuck into strengthening, boarding and insulating the loft room until it is finally structurally sound and ready for furnishing. Downstairs, Sheree races against time to redecorate the rest of the house. Furthermore, she faces a battle with chief builder John as she tries to stretch the budget to include another bedroom and the bathroom. "Cue the chaos! As our deadline draws near, we’ve got furniture to build, rooms to dress – and I’m sticking to my word with the bathroom,” she declares. In order to raise more funds, Sheree heads into town and throws herself at the mercy of local traders. “Four rooms to decorate now. No flooring, no carpet, no money,” she says. Luckily, local suppliers are more than happy to assist a family in need, meaning Sheree returns with flooring, carpets, wallpaper and furniture – all for free. But with only 24 hours left to go, will the renovation be completed in time? While Sheree and the building team have been transforming Rob and Wendy’s home into the property they deserve, Dominic has been busy investigating the dodgy builder – who it seems has upset more than one family. The cowboy has been sued in the past and disqualified from running a company. As a sole trader, he has a history of leaving jobs unfinished, erecting unsound structures and avoiding all responsibility for the lives he has turned upside down. However, Dom is adamant that the builder’s trail of destruction will end here. Armed with a dossier of the builder’s shoddy work, Dom confronts him and exposes him to the nation.

60 min

Woking

60 min

Recap

Dom Littlewood and Sheree Murphy revisit the families that have been helped over three series of the consumer show, and catch up with the builders who made their lives hell.

60 min