Access Loft Conversions

Unfortunately we didnt 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. All of this contradicting the submitted, signed off plans. The project managers response - to shrug his shoulders and comment on tolerances to the plan! We then had the wrong feature windows installed (cheaper, though wed been charged for the higher spec). ALC response; well fit the right ones if you pay extra. Luckily Id kept earlier communications from the original company contact whod 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 couldnt face them coming back to repair some of the really poor quality plastering. The project manager didnt 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 didnt comment on a fault it wasnt 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 cant be expected to keep up to date was again rubbish. To create the headroom we had to have an extra Velux inserted (with new planning permission) and reluctantly had to pay towards the window otherwise wed have had to have an old oversized one they had in stock which looked totally incongruous in the space. 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 dont be fooled and do not use this company. Theres clearly no pride in the workmanship and notably ALC offers no opportunity to comment on their work on their social media or website, hence the delay in posting until I found this site. Date of experience: August 21, 2022
Jan 30th, 2023

Surveyor booked for the 16.11.2021 and still waiting for him /her to turn up or a phone call to explain why they didn't turn up . Its now the 20th
Apr 4th, 2022

seems a lovely company, impressive brochure, the chap seemed nice who came to give us a quote. the issue was after this we waited weeks and weeks for the quote, called the office a number of times telling me the quote was been done and the person was out fo the office, rang again, difference excuse, called again and again, told they would call me back, was told in the end that the guy had gone to Leeds festival or something like this still didn't get the quote. so unfortunately we had to tell them to forget it, we needed the quote so we could gather the funds ie re-mortgage, if a company is as good as they say then then a quote should be able to be generated in a few weeks and if they were a professional company they wouldn't make customers call and call and waite not impressed wasted a lot of time
Oct 19th, 2021

Sep 13th, 2021

I'm struggling with the positive reviews here, presumably they had a different set of contractors to me. My loft conversion was absolutely shocking from commencement of work to completion. Work started on 6th January 2020. Was told the job would be 6 weeks start to finish with the majority of it done in the first 2 weeks. Was actually completed in late July (SIX MONTHS LATER!). The company blamed COVID for disruption but COVID didn't hit until after the job was supposed to be finished (should have been late February, COVID didn't arrive until March 2020). I lost count of the number of times they promised to show up and didn't. They ended up sacking the first joinery contractor on the job, I believe it was because he was running a side job and 'borrowing' materials. There are a number of problems with the work but the main ones are the floor. It's so bad in one place that it runs off by about 10mm over the course of about a metre. I can actually place a ball on the floor and it rolls across on it's own. According to ALC this is 'normal' and they would not get into the subject of fixing the problem as they felt it was fine. "You won't even notice it when the carpet is down". I can. The second problem with the floor is that it has very loud squeaks as I walk across it. It's bad enough that even carefully walking across the floor wakes the person up in the bedroom below. Again, I brought it up with them that the boards don't seem to sit on the joists correctly. They added some screws which did nothing to help and then the foreman told me this was normal and would go away when I added furniture to the room (it didn't). Again, they were unwilling to do anything else. There were any number of finishing / snagging issues, many of which I gave up on getting sorted as it was less effort and better for my mental health (if not my wallet) just to do it myself. There was extensive water damage to my kitchen and bathroom following their workman not leaving my roof in a watertight state over a weekend during which there was a storm. They later denied that they were responsible for the damage and that it was 'wear and tear'. It's funny wear and tear that leaves a bulge in your ceiling, fills your light fittings with debris, curls up the corners of your laminate and causes your kitchen units and kickboards to bulge where they were standing in water. After much argument they finally agreed to replaster the ceiling but that was all. They damaged the roof tiles around my chimney stack, presumably by walking on them. "That wasn't us that did that" said the foreman who hadn't been there when the damage was done. Well who else was on the roof then? They finally agreed to fix this with, once again, much arguing. I've had to repeatedly badger them for buildings / safety certificates and, in fact, I finally received them 1 year to the day that work was due to start. They say you don't make the final (small) payment until you're satisfied. Well, you do if you want the scaffolding taken down, skip taken off your drive or progress with building certificates because they used all of these as leverage to get me to make the final payment even though I was not happy with the job. I've had to chalk this one up to experience but, in my opinion, avoid this company if you want things done on time and to a high standard. And if you value your sanity. update: You said you find it odd I waited a year to complain. You only removed the scaffolding and skip from my drive 6 months ago (remember, the ones you refused to remove until I signed to say I was satisfied) and I didn't receive the building certificates until 2 months ago. You say these weren't in your power, it turns out the building control people were waiting on photos from YOU. In the end I found this out myself and ultimately took and sent the photos myself or else I would probably still be waiting. Given you point blank refused to acknowledge the need for many of the issues I asked to be addressed what would be the point of calling you to discuss it now?
Aug 26th, 2020