Regulators have ‘several’ open investigations following a rise in complaints about surveyors providing generic reports for housing disrepair claims, the Gazette can reveal.

The Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors (RICS) says it has seen a rise in complaints in the first quarter of this year about members working in this field.

The increase has prompted a warning to practitioners and will bring about a revised standard for surveyors acting as expert witnesses, which will be going out to consultation in the near future.

The role of surveyors has come under closer scrutiny as the number of law firms running housing disrepair claims has increased, mostly concentrated in the north west of England. In one case reported last week, defendant solicitors alleged an ‘unhealthy connection’ between housing disrepair solicitors and the surveyors they instruct.

Lawyers have told the Gazette it is common for surveyors to report that damages exceed £1,000 by just a few pounds. That figure is critical as it means the case is likely to be moved to the fast track where legal costs are more likely to be recovered.

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There are concerns that this arrangement is being engineered by all parties working on behalf of claimants. The Gazette has this week seen a copy of a witness statement from one of the largest surveyors agents, provided for a series of joined-up cases in 2022 and 2023. The agent admitted it paid surveyors different rates according to whether they claimed to have found more or less than £1,000-worth of required works at a property. The fixed fee for an estimate of more than £1,000 was £225, compared with a fee of £75 when the estimate was for less than £1,000 – effectively incentivising surveyors to inflate the claims.

County court judgments are rarely reported, but in one such ruling from Wolverhampton County Court in 2023, the deputy district judge said the expert witness surveyor had ‘misrepresented the contents of his report and substantially breached his expert witness declaration (verified with a signed statement of truth)’. The claimant solicitors had also breached the pre-action protocol for housing cases and made no attempt to rectify misleading errors in the expert report.

The firm and the surveyor involved were referred to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and RICS respectively following the claim being struck out.

It is understood that the two regulators have started to attend quarterly meetings with key stakeholders including local councils to discuss these issues.

Earlier this year, RICS issued a warning notice to members after receiving reports of concerns about the quality of expert evidence in housing disrepair claims.

Examples of poor conduct included:

  • Experts being approached by claims managers asking them to copy and paste reports without proper investigation
  • Solicitors in high volume cases instructing the same expert in a large number of claims and creating a conflict of interest because of the size of fees generated
  • Information about the expert’s qualification or experience being misrepresented in claims.

The RICS said: ‘These behaviours do not comply with our standards for members and are likely to lead to serious consequences for RICS members, including regulatory sanctions and legal consequences. The contents of an expert witness report, including information about the qualifications and expertise of the witness may be subject to robust cross-examination in any hearing, and an expert may be found to be in contempt of court if they make a false statement in their report.’

The Gazette reported earlier this year that Liverpool firm First Legal had been ordered to pay a wasted costs order for the conduct of a housing disrepair claim against City of York Council. The local authority said this was part of a pattern of unsuccessful claims from no win, no fee law firms.

A freedom of information request has since revealed that 29 claims against City of York Council in total have proceeded to full trial since the start of 2020: none of these has resulted in claimants being awarded damages.

Lawyers say that unlike in these examples, local authorities and housing associations are often minded to settle claims they may want to contest because of the potential costs involved.

Peter Marcus, the barrister from Trinity Chambers who led the council’s defence in the latest claim, said: 'For anyone concerned about social housing, these victories in court are bittersweet. When tenants’ cases come unstuck in court, as they so often do, particularly when due to misconduct by claimant solicitors or by surveyors, it vindicates a council’s or housing association’s determination to defend these cases to trial.

'But, at the end of such a case, tenants at the centre of these claims can come off very badly indeed, particularly when they find themselves landed with hefty costs orders and let down by the solicitors they thought were going to help them.'