Mike Keeling, 56, was left “gobsmacked” after he returned home to find his house in Warrington, Cheshire, covered in scaffolding – and he has no idea who put it there or why
A couple were left baffled after returning home to discover their house mysteriously draped in scaffolding they never ordered.
CCTV footage from a doorbell camera captured three unidentified construction workers turning up at the home of married couple Mike Keeling, 56, and Leanne Smith, 45, whilst they were out on Saturday. The video shows the workers offloading scaffold tubes from a flatbed lorry, whilst another man presses the couple’s Ring doorbell.
The man, who wasn’t sporting any company uniform and drove a van without a company logo, cheekily replied ‘Hello, Chinese takeaway’ when an automated voice prompted him to leave a message. Mike Keeling arrived home around 2.30pm on Saturday to find the unexpected scaffolding decorating his property.
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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 bewildered father-of-one, who lives in Warrington, Cheshire, has since been making enquiries with houses on his street, contacted local scaffolders, and knocked on all the number 13s on neighbouring roads – named after other trees – but is yet to uncover any clues.
He said: “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 dismantle the equipment and accept the parts as payment – but Mike feels uneasy about disposing of someone else’s belongings.
He stated: “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 an eyesore, payroll company director Mike said the scaffolding has stopped his wife, Leanne, from charging her electric Mini at home. He explained: “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 – 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.”
Mike is now hoping that media coverage will help track down the scaffolding’s rightful owners. Meanwhile, he’s considering using it to check his gutters before winter arrives.
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?”