Builder threats

[tomlinsonrob1]

My builder whom we owe approx 3k which we are retaining has told us if we dont pay it now we wont get our certificate for our house we been in since it was built in march. We owned the land so could move in before you ask and the builder was building for us not for him to sell. The thing is there are massive problems and i mean massive. Dont and wont go into them but there refusin even to talk about it just demandin there money. We reckon plain and simple cowboys. What i would like to know is legally can they cancel as we have paid the money for vert back in march and still no cert?

Looks like we are going to court, after we compiled independent review from building surv.

Any opinions?

[NHBC-BULDER VICTIM]

hi, we were in exactly the same position as you are now a few years ago, a whole list of problems holding money back to fix them cos builder didn't want to know.
We didn't go into the NHBC resolution process as we were wise enough to know even at that stage it would all go in his favour if we did.
He threatened to deregister the house and cancel the cert.
I found some info some where on the NHBC website saying that a cert could not be cancelled unless an alternative warranty had been arranged and put on the house- i.e it couldn't just be cancelled.
We were waiting to get our final stage of mortgage payment to finish the house (builder had been put off the job by us as the longer he messed around on it the more problems were being created).
We had to get our solicitor to write a letter to NHBC stating that we knew that the warranty could not be cancelled without an alternative in place. Before this the NHBC shrugged us off but after... we I was told to ring their office and what to say and hey-presto the cert came out to our address. They were trying to side with the builder until it came to crunch time.