Garage Made Fault Worse

Ameee007

Hi, my car has a roof leak. I took my car into a local garage for fault finding. I left my car at the garage owners home. Later that day the garage owner explained he was not able to repair the roof leak but on trying to prize a roof panel off he has admitted cracking this roof panel in the process. I collected my car and obsiously he has not charged me for his time (should think not) . I am unable to have the roof panel repaired as it comes as a whole new roof unit which is £5k as it is a metal convertible folding roof.
Where can I go with claiming damages and rectifying this existing fault that the garage owner has now made worse.
The problem I have is that why did the garage owner not carry out the diagnostics at his own garage of which he has a Facebook page but no website but looked at my car on his own home premises.
Should I go through a small claims court, solicitor or any other suggesting? Thank you! 

mattyprice4004

You'll ideally need a report stating that what the garage owner did was negligent - if he couldn't have foreseen the panel would crack and used reasonable skill in trying to remove it, then he's not liable. 
If he's damaged a panel in a way that wasn't reasonable then Small Claims (preceded by an LBA) is the way to go, but check that you're actually not throwing money down the drain first.