A group of Leeds residents claim they have been left with “trashed, bomb site” lofts by a loft converting company that has left them with exposed roofs, scaffolding, water damage and rubble.
One Farsley mum, Leanne Harrison, was so distressed she formed a Facebook group to warn others about her experience - and discovered 15 others in the same situation as her.
The group claims they have lost a combined £500,000 between them to Trelawny Roofing, previously named Trelawny Lofts, run by company director Colin Brown with help from project manager Michael Turner.
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Leeds Live spoke to multiple victims who felt they have been manipulated, “bullied” and abandoned.
They claim scaffolding was set up before payment was made as a way of “pressuring” them into the purchase, and have also alleged that Colin was “aggressive” down the phone, chasing the initial payment.
Customers are still waiting for construction to continue, months after their lofts were pulled apart.
In some instances, there are claims that at some homes, scaffolding was erected and workers never returned to continue the job after payment was made.
After Trelawny vacated their office in Wortley Road, Armley, victims say they are now even more difficult to get in contact with.
‘I’ve never cried so much
Leanne, 30, and husband Adam, 36 and a graphic designer, live in Farsley. They are parents to a boy, 2, and an eight-month-old baby girl.
The married couple hired Trelawny to convert their loft back in September 2021.
They thought it would be a straightforward job and agreed to pay £34,800 for the installation of a dormer, en suite, and a walk-in wardrobe area.
They claim they made the initial upfront payment of £17,400, feeling “pressured” with the scaffolding already in place - but say construction did not go smoothly.
The couple claim workers ripped apart the loft in a disorganised fashion, then began arriving less and less frequently over the next month.
They claim getting in contact with Trelawny proved difficult, with messages, emails and phone calls going ignored.
Adam and Leanne claim they have been waiting 17 weeks for the work to be completed, after it began on September 27, and say workers have not been at the house since December 13.
“The only time I ever heard from Colin was when he wanted money from me, it was just over the phone and he was very aggressive,” said Leanne.
The couple claim Colin and Michael attempted to inflate the price by £5,000 to “strengthen the floors”.
After this was rejected, as the couple had already agreed on a figure for the whole job, they said work ceased. Leanne and Adam were left in the lurch, distraught, with lots of questions, a “trashed” loft and thousands of pounds out of pocket.
Leanne said: “It’s like a bomb site, it’s full of rubble, electric wires, plumbing and you can see all the floor opened up with all the pipes. You just want to come back down again, it’s awful.”
They’ve been left with gaps in the roof, bare floorboards with the plumbing exposed, a dormer with a hatch for a window but no panes – there’s a sheet of wood shielding the outside – and no insulation.
“I’ve never cried so much in my life and I’m not a crier but I cried,” admitted Leanne, who was particularly distressed as her maternity leave had been ruined.
“I’ve gone through every single emotion, I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve had anger. There have been times when I haven’t wanted to get out of bed because of the thought of having another ‘Groundhog Day’ of dealing with this again.”
Leanne added: “At one point, I felt like the house could have just burned down around me and I could have just watched it because I was just so sick of it.”
Leanne and Adam went to their bank to see if they could request their payments back but were told as soon as scaffolding is up and work has technically commenced, the BACS transaction cannot be returned.
After not hearing back from Trelawny for months, Leanne set up the ‘Trelawny Lofts/Roofing Victim Reviews’ Facebook group to warn others.
Leanne said: “We’re not stupid people, we’ve got good jobs - we’ve just been hoodwinked by these wolves in sheep’s clothing.
“We’ve had the wool pulled over all our eyes. It’s made me feel awful.”
‘P***** in a bucket’
Married couple Graeme Davies and Rachel Rich, claim to have paid Trelawny an upfront fee of £22,800 for a similar loft conversion in August at their home in Meanwood.
Graeme, 48, claims he felt ‘violated’ after his experience with Colin and Michael, and finding out other customers had reported problems.
Graeme has accused the firm of ‘spinning stories’ during the project. He said: “I felt violated, ripped off and angry.”
Scaffolding was put up before their initial payment, and the couple claim they “felt a little pressured into the deal”.
Rachel, 48, said: “I think this is how the bullying works. Because the scaffolding went up, it is sort of de facto logical to carry on working with them because they’ve spent money on the scaffolding right now so we have to sign up.
“They called me on my mobile every day until we handed over the money. ‘Just checking where the money is, just checking’ until they wore me down and we handed over the money. Then they just disappeared for ages.”
Graham, a professor at the University of York and Rachel, a reader in History at Leeds Beckett University, claim the work was ‘disorganised’ with tiles ‘yanked off the roof’, leaving the house exposed.
They say a dormer window was installed but then construction petered out.
The couple had been dealing with project manager Michael, who Rachel claims would laugh off her questions and patronisingly call her a “worrier”.
Rachel said: “They were making me feel like I was being a neurotic female. It’s quite a powerful tool to use as it put me on the back foot a lot.”
The couple claim they have been waiting 20 weeks for work to be completed - scaffolding went up on September 7 and work stopped at the end of November, with the exception of Lee checking on how weatherproof the loft was on December 16.
Rachel said she wanted to know exactly what their money had been spent on and asked to see a spreadsheet of the accounting.
When Graeme called up demanding answers and for work to continue, they say they were repeatedly told that Covid-19 was causing the disruption.
Graeme said: “They keep telling me they’ve got Covid. They mentioned Covid a lot - like ‘all the guys have Covid’.”
He said Colin promised the work would be completed back in October.
Graeme recounted one particularly distressing day when workers arrived and left a nasty surprise.
The 48-year-old said they weren’t the “usual lads” and they could smell cigarette smoke wafting down from the loft whilst they were up there.
He claimed: “They came and p***** in a bucket and left it up in the loft.
Graeme claimed no work was done ‘except sawing up some bits of wood’.
He claimed: “They also left the wood in a precarious place, nothing actually happened but it was hanging off the scaffolding over our conservatory.”
Graeme said he also found cigarette butts on the floor.
The couple cover the gaps in the roof with a tarpaulin but “rain came through and it rained hard,” said Graeme.
The couple said this caused water damage to all the ceilings on the first floor and Rachels’ computers in her home office narrowly escaped one of the leaks. Every time it rains, they now must go up and check none is coming through the roof.
They say it’s taken an “emotional toll” on them as they can no longer trust the integrity of their house.
A grandfather, who wished to remain anonymous and spent £53,000 on his daughter’s first house in Sheffield, feels his life is now “wrecked”.
He said: “I feel wrecked. My 35-year marriage is in pieces and my daughter's house is a wreck and it's all my fault.”
Leeds Live received payment receipts from seven victims, these amounted to a total of £220,436. One customer paid Trelawny £60,000.
'We haven’t done anything wrong,' claim loft converters
Leeds Live met with Colin and Michael to discuss the allegations and the pair denied any wrongdoing.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” said Trelawny company director Colin.
Michael Trelawny the project manager, said: “We spent all the money on labour and material through the hard times. The problem was, when we started to run out of money, we started to grasp at other jobs. We had to pick which jobs we could complete to finish. Naivety, yes. But criminal? No.”
Asked if the incomplete work was down to incompetence, Michael said: “Yes, yes, yes.”
“The illnesses, the Covid and all the other rubbish, that’s what slowed us down. Some of the lads we paid twice to do the same job and that was our problem,” continued Michael.
The 51-year-old said he “struggled” to get labour and claimed many were dishonest with him about being qualified joiners or roofers.
Michael said that “nearly all of them [the loft conversions] are 45 per cent completed”.
The pair denied scaffolding was put up in homes to “pressure” customers into hiring them and said “no, never” when asked if they left scaffolding on homes never to return.
They blamed a sacked member of staff for any incomplete work.
Colin vehemently denied that he was aggressive and forceful to customers down the phone to extract payment.
“I don’t get involved in that. I never hassle people,” he said, once again blaming an ex-staff member if anything untoward had happened in that regard.
He added that he records every conversation and can prove he’s never been aggressive to customers down the phone.
Colin and Michael denied they inflated prices after a contract was signed.
In the instance where Leanne Harrison needed her “floor strengthening” for an extra £5,000, Michael claimed the floor was “bouncy” and “unsafe”.
He went on to say even though it would cost him £5,000 for the labour and materials, he halved the price but claimed Leanne went “berserk” so decided to waive the added fee in the end.
Colin denied he used Covid-19 as an excuse not to send workers to finish the work. He said that “every person in my organisation has had it”.
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