Has my solicitor screwed up?

welshman10

Ok bit of a long story but here goes...

In 2002, I bought a brand new house, did everything properly, had the searches etc. All was good.

Out of the blue in December 2006, I received a letter from the water board saying that my house (and 5 of my neighbours) houses had been built over a public sewer without their approval and that the sewer has become fille dwith rubble and that the developer has diverted this sewer into a private sewer.

The water board said that as a solution, they have had a tender for the work to grout up the sewer to make it safe. They state that as we are the current householders we are responsible for the cost (divided by 6). This amounts to £500 per household.

We sent a copy of this letter to our solicitor, who stated that we are not liable. It is still not clear at this stage who actually is liable. It is still in the hands of our solicitor.

However, whenever we ring for an update on the matter, the secretary asks who is calling and disappears for 5 minutes. When she comes back it is always a different excuse like "she is busy / out of the office" etc.

I have sent a written letter asking for an update and got no response. I have submitted a few emails and only got one vague response saying it has been passed to the litigation team.

Now I think that either they are giving us second (or third) class service because we are not going to be a source of income for them now as we paid in full 4/5 years ago or even worse our solicitor was at fault and did not do the searches properly so is avoiding us.

What can we do. We have chased them and chased them for answers but get no response. The water board have already sent us one reminder and we cannot give them a proper response.

I have thought of a few courses of action; writing to one of the partners* of the solicitors stating how diabolical their service has been, threatening to go to the law society or even asking for copies of all the paperwork and telling them we are instructing another solicitor to get to the bottom of it.

Anyone got any suggestions?

* The problem is the girl that dealt with this...her father is one of the partners!!

bobbie78

Does your contents insurance include a legal helpline they might be able to help - or does your buildings insurance include things like this?

krispy444

First of all I would say that you are not liable for this but the developer would be, as they have built over the public sewer without permission etc.

If you are having trouble with the solicitors and getting no joy you can either go through their complaints procedure which should be on their original client care letter they sent you after you instructed them, if you don't have that then ask reception what their complaints procedure is. If you don't think you are going to get any joy because of the family relationship then I would suggest you instruct a separate solicitor who will request your purchase file from them and then you will be able to see what searches and enquiries were made etc. This new solicitor will also be able to advise who was liable and your next course of action. Don't waste any time doing this and good luck.

silvercar

Your solicitor is not speaking to you because they have nothing to report would be my guess.

Your anger should be directed to the builder not the solicitor, if they diverted the sewer then they knew it was there and should have dealt with it properly.

The cost of £3,000 will mean that the builders will pay; they won't want the bad publicity of a court case and £3,000 is more affordable for them than £500 is for you.

Chances are they didn't because it wasn't on the council plans so they didn't declare it and covered it up.

welshman10

silvercar wrote: »

Your solicitor is not speaking to you because they have nothing to report would be my guess.

Your anger should be directed to the builder not the solicitor, if they diverted the sewer then they knew it was there and should have dealt with it properly.

The cost of £3,000 will mean that the builders will pay; they won't want the bad publicity of a court case and £3,000 is more affordable for them than £500 is for you.

Chances are they didn't because it wasn't on the council plans so they didn't declare it and covered it up.

But we ask them for updates because we have the water board demanding payment and they tell us nothing. We only get fobbed off with promises of return calls that never materialise. This has gone on for 6 months now.

The only thing we have ever got out of them is that they have written to the developer's lawyers to request that they pay up. That was months ago and surely there must be some procedure where if they get no response they can take further action?

The builder could claim that the council gave them planning permission. It seems that everyone has passed the blame onto someone else, leaving us with demands for payment and possible court action, even though we are the innocent party.

silvercar

can't you persuade the water board to contact the builder directly?

The builder would have submitted plans to the council, but the layout of sewers etc is very weak on plans and the first time it came to light would have been when they were on site building. Clearly, they saw a sewer in their way and so diverted the drainage. By the sounds of it they filled it with rubble and moved on.

Now it seems the water board have uncovered this (how?) and claim not to be happy with the way it was blocked off. This should be a matter between the builder and the water board.

At the end of the day the council signed off the building regs on your house so I would have thought you could use this fact.

You could try posting on the MSE water board, someone more knowledgable may be on there.

welshman10

I guess I could try that. The water board say that "unfortunately as current householders we are liable".

silvercar

The water board are probably right.

In the deeds to my house it states that the water pipes are the responsibility of the person who owns the land that they are on. The water board then identified a leak in the supply pipe and quoted all sorts of laws that say the repsonsibility for the pipe is shared amongst the houses it supplies. So even though my deeds said I shouldn't be liable, in practice I was!

Your facts seems to point to the builders hiding something, if they filled a sewer with rubbish and diverted the flow, it looks like they were at fault. They would no doubt say that they were building in line with the planning permission already approved and this has now been signed off by the council, so they feel they should be in the clear.

It may be that they filled the (now) disused sewer. They would say this is satisfactory and the water board are saying it need properly sealing rather than just filling. If this had been discussed between the builders and the water board at the time it would have been resolved. The builders would have just got on with the job because time is money.

You could tell the water board to take it up with the council who signed off the building regs; why not speak to the building regs dept yourself? If the builders don't want problems when they do more work in your area they may be obliging to a request from the council.

I wonder if OfWat (is that the water regulatory body?) have an opinion?