On the home front

I bet glamorous Sarah Beeny is a wow with the lads at her local builders merchants. She's the host on the Channel 4 programme Property Ladder. It's a sort of makeover programme with knobs on. But there is a real danger she is going to get someone, such as herself, into real trouble.

Makeover programmes are one thing, but what Property Ladder does is quite another. I have no trouble with Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock rummaging around in my geraniums. Nor do I have a problem with Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen being let loose on my curtain rails. I can even cope with Trinny & Susannah trying to get Jeremy Clarkson out of his bloody awful jeans and into a suit. And the reason I say that's all okay is because the gardeners, the interior designers and the haute couture fiends are all top-dog, fully experienced experts. But Beeny's programme is a disaster waiting impatiently to happen.

The episode I saw was all about a young fella called Tallat Mukhtar. He is, he said, a merchant banker who has decided to become a part-time builder. Then, God help us, he decided to become a full-time builder. I bet merchant banking is sorry to see the back of him. This fellow has some talent for taking risks. The trouble is that he hasn't got a clue, not a gnat's whisker of know-how about building. And yet there on Channel 4 he appears fitting out the empty shell of a loft apartment in trendy Shoreditch, east London. And there is Beeny "advising" (according to the Channel 4 website) this laddie on buying property with a view to renovating it and selling for a profit.

He bought 90 m² of open space as a massive DIY job. After a hard day's banking he would drop by to be a deadly architect. He had never heard of the Building Regulations until Beeny nudged him in the ribs. Good job he made contact with the building inspector as she advised. His daft layout of the walls (which he intended to build himself) would have been not just a fire hazard but a complete danger to life and limb.

No, no, clear off, I yelled at the TV screen. The gorgeous programme presenter beamed and tittered. Or was she taking the mickey?

Now, let's get this straight. This bungling amateur, spotlighted by Channel 4, was proposing to DIY the screeds, plumbing, heating, sanitaryware, kitchen, first and second fix carpentry, to say nothing of the finishings.

Then he intended to sell it on for a cool £100,000 over and above his layout. I just hope he tells the buyer that this is a DIY effort.

As for the kitchen, bog-standard units will always be spotted, even if a bit extra is spent on flashy worktops. You might guess that by now the loony £30,000 budget set by the banker had already hit £45,000. And I confess that I was now hoping that this amateur would make a ghastly loss. But worse was to come. He was gloating because his adventure was still going to make him a packet. He had done most of the work himself and decided that he would give up banking altogether and keep up this building lark. No, no, clear off, I yelled at the television screen. The gorgeous Sarah beamed and tittered. Or was she taking the mickey? Was she watching a rank amateur taking advantage of a blip on the property market and smiling in the belief that he would one day take a dreadful fall? By then will he have left behind a load of duff work?

I would strongly encourage Beeny to read The Defective Premises Act 1972 and ask herself if her advising role is "in connection with the provision of a dwelling". It certainly looks that way to me. In which case, she will be a target in damages if, for example, the Building Regulations were breached. (And by the way, the issue of an inspector's certificate is no guarantee that the work is up to snuff.) Next, she should look to the common law liability in negligence. If she is in an advising role and some later visitor or purchaser is injured, or worse, she could find herself in the list of defendants. Next, if Mr Mukhtar is sued in contract for duff workmanship, she should watch out in case the banker claims that she knew – or ought to have known – that he was going wrong in his construction work.