Delay due to solicitors mistake?

gameforalaugh

Thanks for reading this post, just after some advice.
We were due to (exchange and) complete by the 20th Feb and yesterday we receive an email out of the blue stating our coal mine search has come back locating a mine shaft 20m within the boundary. The village, indeed the county we live in, in North Wales, is well known for its mines so this isn't a surprise. We now need an indepth survey which will push us past our completion date.

We actually paid the fees for searches on the 5th November but on the 8th Feb we received our final bill and the searches were listed again. I queried this in person on the 10th in the office and was given an accurate bill which we paid. The mining report we have received states it was instructed on the 10th Feb and produced on 17th Feb.

So my questions, I'm wondering whether the searches should have been done earlier (I'm not sure on order of things as our mortgage offer was only received end of Jan). Also, if they weren't instructed, would any of the others be outstanding as I'm sure I read that the council one could take weeks. My vendor is pretty miffed and I presume her vendors will be the same as there were no issues on Tuesday when I called the office to see how we were set. If it is the solicitors fault, should we complain as it does complicate things for us now that we cant move in the school holidays and it delays the rental of our current property so we're likely to pay another mortgage payment on it without tenants being in situ.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

TBagpuss

Did you instruct the solicitors to do them earlier? It is not necessarily unreasonnable to wait until you had your mortgage offer, as of course had you not got an offer you would, presumably, not have wanted to pay for searches if you could not go ahead with the purchase.

How long council searches take varies hugely from one council to another (for example, in our area, on the border between two councils, one is currently taking about 3 days, the other about 8 weeks)

Have you spoken to your solicitor to ask when the other searches were sent off and why they were not done sooner?

gameforalaugh

I will ask those questions tomorrow as I wasn't sure if he had messed up or whether I presumed the worst. We actually got the report back today which was a big surprise. Everything is fine with the shaft so we are now waiting for Natwest to make a decision. To answer your first question, it was the solicitor himself in November who said he needed the £175 to proceed with searches so I'm pretty sure he has made an error. Hopefullly, if Natwest are ok, we may complete by Tuesday....fingers crossed!