Owning your own home

If the Land Registry details for the property haven’t been updated to show the stolen land, then they are not ever going to sell it anyway.

Can't you claim adverse possession after a while (decade+)?

Harry the Hermit style? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hallowes

Yeah, this is very weak... typically it would be a demolition order and the threat of a £20k fine (if the notice is ignored).

You can then submit retroactive planning within 30 days of the notice, but that would be unlikely to go through, then you'd appeal, same story, then you'd agree to 'make it good' by reverting and they'd possibly forget the fine.

If you didn't revert to a good standard the threat of the fine would come back, or be enforced with a potential demolition order to boot.

Doesn't it depend on circumstances? If someone can't afford to demolish it and it is their primary residence, they might get a temporary pass with those restrictions upon sale?

In other words, a council won't force bankruptcy or homelessness on someone in such a case.

if it's ever sold it all has to be demolished

This is odd. I thought after 5(?) years whatever you've built can't be enforced against (ordered demolished). But perhaps this is the enforcement and the consequences can come later. Interesting if enforceable.

Just checked, they had planning permission denyed 3 times so far!

Look at this swathe of forest they removed, there is an area twice as big the other side.

you can see the end of the house on the right, thats where they're land stops so they've taken a 1.5 meter wide chunk out and eclosed it and then trashed about about 40sq meters of woods. You can also see all the building waste

@hoefla I thought that was only if no one complained / the council noticed?

I dont really care about their ugly rear extension tbh, its the stolen public land that erks me

Whereabouts is this?

Redbridge council

Bought a washing machine that AO fitted six weeks ago and is now leaking.

Firstly, I would avoid AO in the future, they're extremely frustrating to try to deal with.

Secondly, as it's over 30 days ago, according to AO I apparently have to have it repaired rather than replaced. This is entailing calls between AO, the manufacturer Beko and the warranty engineers Domex, which is obviously BS to deal with.

Does anyone know if this insistence on repairs is accurate? The machine is obviously not acceptable quality, and I thought the sales and goods act meant that I was entitled to a replacement. Anyone know?

To be honest, I'm more tempted to just try a credit card chargeback on it than deal with it any further.

I've been getting loads of mould in bathroom. Window but no extractor. Loft directly above

What's the easiest way to fit an extractor? Thanks

If you can get a louvred vent tile and power to the loft then up that way is potentially 'quite' easy.

I think you can take a fused spur off the lighting circuit for that... At least that's what I've got!

Remember about the position of rafters when choosing where to put the tile.

Yes. They’re allowed one go at a repair, so long as it doesn’t inconvenience you too much but if that fails you can demand a replacement.

https://www.lawble.co.uk/claiming-under-the-sale-of-goods-act/

I thought the Sale of goods act had been replaced by the consumer rights act. The 30 days thing is the distance selling regs iirc.

Thanks - that's a very useful link, I was trying to piece it together from several places.

I had their chap come out today and diagnose a gasket on the drying cycle, but that the washing is fine to use. Given I've just run a wash and it leaked, which prompted my looking into chargeback s and the like.

I guess he's misdiagnosed the error, and that will presumably be their one opportunity to fix it.

O yeh. Try this:

https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act-aKJYx8n5KiSl

“How long do you have to return a faulty product?

The Consumer Rights Act gives you the legal right to either get a refund for goods that are of unsatisfactory quality, unfit for purpose or not as described, or get it repaired - depending on how long you've owned it:

0 - 30 days you can claim a full refund for goods that are of unsatisfactory quality, unfit for purpose or not as described.
30 days - six months you must give the retailer one opportunity to repair or replace it before you can claim a refund”

I guess he's misdiagnosed the error, and that will presumably be their one opportunity to fix it.

Yep. A £150 robo hoover we had broke, they failed to repair it once, then begged for another chance, then offered a refund. I wanted a new hoover. Turned out they’d stopped making the £150 one and had to send me a £350 one as a replacement. Best day of my life.

Anyone know where I can buy pre-mixed lime mortar in a east London, IRL?

Need to do some emergency re-pointing to mitigate water ingress near the roof…

Thanks, how easy is it to swap a tile from the inside?

I don't.

But I ordered some from here https://steadfastspl.com/ and it was a quick turnaround, you can post them a sample and they will give you the closest match or can mix a specific match.

Lots of online places send via courier for small orders, usually like 70-100kg max.

Have family who live remote, zanussi machine from late 80's 90's finally died and part no longer in production for near 20 years so was impossible to repair.
Bought a new bosch average model, maybe £500 from AO. Paid extra for the long distance delivery and fitting and removal of old machine, all normal costs and nothing alarming.
Day 2 machine broke, no signs of life, nothing else on the circuit affected.
Took a month until AO were in the area again to replace. Replaced with new machine, lasted maybe 2 or 3 weeks until same again. But took them a month to collect so then dropped into 'we'll attempt a repair'.
Was maybe 4 months without a washing machine last year due to it. In the end turned out there was a whole batch of bosch machines with a faulty control board that AO had a large amount of so they were just changing one bad board for another several times over.
Got a Beko or another zAnussi (not Japanese production) and its been fine for a year now on same power supply. Had an electrician out who left a machine on it for a week to check for voltage surges incase that was causing it, nope.

Thanks to you and @Kurai

Will take a look online, but have bought some ‘mortar repair in a can’ from Screwfix as an emergency measure as rain looms…

I've spoken to them (AO) this morning. It's just a really crap customer experience. It took about half an hour. I'm used to just getting replacements if things are broken (I guess due to Amazon), not having to constantly deal with people skipping responsibility. Trying to have a conversation about who's responsible for my case is incendiary because I don't care!

Instead I've had to be in a three way conference call with someone from AO and Beko, and when they started talking about "If this repair doesn't work, we'll get another engineer out to you to diagnose as soon as we can" had to tell them that I wasn't interested in that because "I know my consumer rights (thanks @Hefty) and that they've only got one go at repairing it"; I've never had to resort to that in my life.

They're inevitably going to end up replacing it because they sold it broken and have misdiagnosed the fault. It's just a load of timewasting, pointless faff, BS and loss goodwill up until that point.

Not possible as far as I know.

Depends what the item is, something simple like an egg timer or a felt tip pen, yeah easy to return/replace as theres not much you can do with it.
Appliances have their own bit of consumer law (usually helps consumers TBF) however this interval period between 4-5 weeks is where it goes from 'really sorry about that, heres another one fitted and replaced FOC ASAP' to 'well we'll schedule an engineer and see what they say, but chances are there is no spare parts available so you'll just have to keep the faulty appliance until we can get the £10 part to fix it, in the mean time we'll just keep you going in circles'