Homeowner left baffled as mystery builders cover house in scaffolding

'There’s no way we can identify these guys'

Doorbell camera footage shows three mystery construction workers turning up at the home of married couple Mike Keeling (56) and Leanne Smith (45) while they were out last Saturday (September 6).

The footage shows workers taking scaffold tubes out of a flatbed truck while another man presses the couple’s Ring doorbell.

The man, not wearing any company uniform and driving a van without a company logo, then says: "Hello, Chinese takeaway" in response to an automated voice asking him to leave a message.

Mike Keeling arrived home at about 2.30 pm on Saturday to find scaffolding on his home.

He said: "I turned onto my road and thought 'oh, somebody’s having some work done', and then I realised it was my house.

"I was a little bit gobsmacked at that point, thinking 'hang on a minute, I didn’t order this – unless my other half has sanctioned some building work without telling me about it,' which seemed unlikely."

The dad-of-one, who lives at 13 Ash Grove, in Warrington, Cheshire, has canvassed houses on his street, called local scaffolders, and knocked on all the number 13s on neighbouring roads, but has yet to find any leads.

He went on to say: "Quite a few people had seen this work being done, but the guys who’d done it had absolutely nothing on them to identify who they were.

"Normally, when you see scaffolding on a building, they put a sign on it. There’s nothing like that.

"There’s nothing on the van, which we could see on the Ring camera."

Other companies have offered to take the equipment down and to accept the parts as payment, however, Mike says he’d feel uneasy about giving away someone else’s property.

He said: "If we were to take it down and dispose of it, potentially that’s theft, even though it was put on our property without permission.

"At another scaffolding firm, one of the guys said, 'Look, we’ll take it down, we won’t charge you for it, but we’ll keep all the poles as payment.'

"Well, again, that makes me feel a little bit dodgy because it’s not my property to do that.

"The scaffolding boards themselves are worth hundreds of pounds.

"The whole thing has completely flummoxed us.”

As well as being unsightly, payroll company director Mike said the scaffolding has left his wife, Leanne, unable to charge her electric Mini at home.

He said: "When we charge it at home, we can charge it completely for about £3 or £4, if that.

"At the charging point, to do it three-quarters full it was £17. It’s a financial cost to us.

"But, that’s less of an issue. It’s more the fact I’ve got a house covered in scaffolding, which is not ideal.

"It’s also a bit of a security issue as the platform they’ve built is right out my bedroom window.

"If somebody was wanting to jump up on the scaffolding, they could use the platform to climb in the window.”

Now, Mike is hoping media attention will help reunite the scaffolding with its rightful owners.

Until then, he’s considering using it to check his gutters ahead of the winter.

He said: "We just don’t know what to do next, because of the fact there’s no way we can identify these guys.

"They may have come from a different town. We were hoping that maybe some building work was going to start, a team of roofers would turn up at another address and realise there’s no scaffolding there, they’d phone the guys who did it, and they might come back and take it down.

"But how long do we leave it for?"