Expert explains builders rights as workers smash up driveway of homeowners who refused to pay

If you're struggling to pay your builders, be wary that there's a small possibility they might just smash up your gaff.

That's what happened earlier this year in Australia when a team of tradies destroyed a concrete driveway they had just laid for a customer.

Builder Jesse Crowe claims homeowner Viola refused to pay for the service of his team, with the unhappy customer saying she wasn't happy with their work.

Always pay the builders, guys. (Getty Stock Image)

Crowe and his team said they negotiated a fee of AU $6,000 (£3,117) to lay down her concrete driveway. But after paying AU $2,500 (£1,299) for the work, the homeowner was not willing to pay the remaining.

She told 7News: "[They said] 'you pay now, now or we will smash the concrete'. They did what they wanted, not what I wanted."

Crowe also told the outlet: "I take pride in my work and I love concrete, I love doing it. I just want to get paid."

Now, for Brits thinking of getting some work done around the house, a lawyer has issued some insight into what would happen if your contractors took matters into their own hands.

Builder Jesse Crowe and his co-workers decided to smash up a drive they'd just laid after the customer allegedly refused to pay up. (7News)

Daniel ShenSmith, a Barrister of England and Wales, explained on his YouTube channel BlackBeltBarrister why builders can't just come into your home and 'smash things up'.

"A builder cannot just come in and smash things up, dismantle things, and take them away," Daniel (@blackbeltbarrister) said.

"Usually when they've been subsumed into the property in one form or another they become part of the property. And so this is a very straightforward criminal damage.

"The very slight narrow exception is where they are not there as a trespasser and there's equipment in there, materials in there, that have not yet been used, not yet subsumed into the building, and the builder takes them with him.

"Because it can't be theft if they haven't been paid for it because they still own it and, ideally, within the contract, and you should always get contracts for these kind of things, most of the building contract disputes that we see are those where there is no written contract.

"It is very difficult to argue these things when there is no written contract, you rely on what intentions were behind it and email correspondence and all sorts of stuff.

"So depending on what it says in the contract, and when title passes of the goods, it is usually going to be when they've been paid for.

"Unless they've been subsumed into the property, which makes it more difficult.

"But if they came in not as a trespasser and took something from the property that they say that belongs to them because it hasn't yet been paid for, that might well be okay."