Access Loft Conversions

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  David Charlesworth

  Unfortunately we didn’t read reviews for Access Loft Conversions on other sites before going ahead with our conversion. We were impressed with the plans and price and initial contact though there was a delay of 3 months after paying initial fees and completion of planning permission to starting work. The project manager was the father of the director, superficially a pleasant-enough chap, but as we soon came to realise, was willing to say anything to appease us when concerned about delays or questions about the build progress. The builders were 2 pleasant guys, very polite, but slow at their work. Our 6 week project took over 6 months due to errors on ALC’ part: The loft floor was built 100mm higher than plan and the roof height around 100mm too low, resulting in much of the room and en-suite being unusable to persons over 4 feet high. The en-suite layout had to be replanned due to the height differences and I now have to stand with my head in the Velux to use the toilet, the toilet door had to be cut at an angle to accommodate the low ceiling height, and we had to lose the only planned wardrobe space in the bedroom, also due to the low ceiling. The project manager’s response - to shrug his shoulders and comment on tolerances to the plan! We then had the wrong feature windows installed (cheaper, though we’d been charged for the higher spec). ALC response; we’ll fit the right ones if you pay extra. Luckily I’d kept earlier communications from the original company contact who’d subsequently ‘left the company’ (though oddly had the same surname as the director and project manager!), so once I shared those they were changed eventually. Plastering quality throughout is awful and despite having some work redone we couldn’t face them coming back to repair some of the really poor quality plastering. The project manager didn’t manage any of the project, was usually ‘down in the South managing the builds there’ and it was entirely down to us questioning and asking for progress that things were sort of addressed. There was no quality control or snagging - if I didn’t comment on a fault it wasn’t addressed. The final straw was when the external building inspector refused the sign off the build due to the stairwell height being too low! The usual excuses of ‘not our fault, the regs must have changed, we can’t be expected to keep up to date’ was again rubbish, to achieve the required headroom we had to have an extra Velux inserted (with new planning permission) and reluctantly had to pay towards the window other we’d have had to have an old one they had in stock which looked totally incongruous. As a previous Trustpilot reviewer commented, ALC was always early with requests for stage payments and ‘forgot’ to take off the initial deposit from the payment schedule. That, and the glossy brochure are the only highlights but please don’t be fooled and do not use this company. There’s clearly no pride in the workmanship and notably ALC offers no opportunity to comment on their work on their social media or website. Date of experience: August 21, 2022

  28-01-2023