Negligence

Solicitors conveying property erroneously informed that building regulation consent given - solicitors failing to make further enquiries - whether negligentCottingham and another v Attey Bower & Jones (a firm): ChD (Rimer J): 30 March 2000Solicitors acting for the purchasers received replies to enquiries before contract, which revealed there had been renovations to the property in 1985.

The vendors claimed to have obtained building regulation consent.

They stated that the consents were not available for the purchasers to see.

The defendants did not seek to obtain copies of the consents from elsewhere.

After moving into the property, the purchasers discovered that there were problems with the structure of the property and that building regulation consent had never been obtained.

They brought an action against the solicitors, claiming that they had been negligent in not having checked whether consent had been given for the 1985 renovations.Philomena Harrison (instructed by Tofield Swann & Smythe, Sheffield) for the purchasers.

Matthew Jackson (instructed by Beachcroft Wansbroughs, Leeds ) for the solicitors.Held, giving judgment for the purchasers, that the solicitors ought to have taken reasonable steps to obtain a sight of any requisite consent and, on discovering that it did not exist, should have advised the purchasers that (1) the 1985 renovations possibly did not comply with building regulations, (2) the purchasers should reappraise the survey which they had commissioned since it was at least in part materially influenced by assumptions that building regulation approval had been obtained, and (3) the purchasers faced some risk of injunction proceedings under s.36(6) of the Building Act 1984; and that in failing to do so the solicitors had been negligent.