What is it with scaffolders?

We've had scaffolding up twice since we've lived here. The first time, when we had the roof replaced, it stayed up for several weeks after the work was finished, and wasn't taken down until we'd prompted and poked and urged and pleaded several times.

As I mentioned at the time, I find it hard to relax properly when the house is surrounded by scaffolding. First floor windows in older properties, inevitably, are not as secure as ground floor ones. They don't have to be. Opportunist burglars don't carry ladders, and even planned burglaries don't usually involve clambering in through an upper-storey window. So I prefer to get it down as soon as practicable once the work is completed.

Our second experience of scaffolding has, so far, been if anything even worse than the first. Admittedly it's not all round the house this time - we've had the gable end repointed - but it is full height and it has been here since the middle of August.

The work was completed before our recent visit to Toronto, so as we were gone for 12 days we fully expected to find it gone on our return. No such luck. A phone call to the builder revealed he was just as surprised as we were, since he'd spoken to the scaffold guy before we went away. After chasing him, we were promised it would be gone by the end of that week. Then by the following Tuesday. No, Friday.

By now the excuses were coming thick and fast. He'd been on holiday, and his men had let the jobs pile up while he was away. He didn't know why it hadn't been done but he'd chase them up. They'd been onto our road and taken down the wrong set of scaffolding from someone else's house (!).

Finally with dark talk of "repercussions" and penalty payments, we were finally promised - no, really - that it would come down on Friday last. And did it? Well when the clock had ticked around to half past two in the afternoon I did begin to lose hope. They eventually arrived just before 3pm. It was gone by 5.

See, as far as I can make out, the thing with scaffold is, you pay for it up front and they come and erect it when you say you need it. But from that point on, there is absolutely no incentive for them to remove it, until the scaffold firm themselves need it for another job. It's like your house is their storage yard, often with built-in advertising. Removing the scaffold takes time and effort, and they've already had their money, so it's time and effort they feel they're not getting paid for.

If we need any more scaffold in the future I think I'll be making sure the penalty clauses are written in from the start, or hold back some money until they take their gear away. Tch.