Subsidence risk due to history of Brine Pumping

Kittley01 · 2 February 2022 at 3:14PM

We're at the very final stage of purchasing a house in East Cheshire. All searches came back and this flagged a moderate to high risk of ground subsidence due to a history of Brine Pumping a long time ago. We we're asked to order a Cheshire Salt Search which confirmed that "a notice of damage was flagged in February 1959 and an inspection of the property revealed evidence of damage through subsidence due to bring pumping and compensation was paid out".

The house we're buying was built in the 1970s and the current owner has lived there for more than 10 yrs so assuming the subsidence damage in 1959 was a previous house that was since demolished. From our eyes, the house visually looks in very good condition with no signs of cracks or damage when we visited twice. We're expecting the home buyers survey report today but wondered if anyone else has had a similar issue and what did you do? Thanks

Kittley01 · 2 February 2022 at 4:31PM

Just to add that the current owner has confirmed through their solicitor to our solicitor in writing that there has been no evidence of subsidence in the time they've lived at the property (more than 10 yrs).

Mahsroh · 2 February 2022 at 4:55PM

Wait and see what comes back from the survey but i'd say it's unlikely to have any impact, particularly as you say, the existing house was built in the 70's.

We had a similar (ish) thing where one of the searches came back basically saying our house had been built on the site of an old swamp! We took the view that the house was built in the 1930's and as it's been standing for circa 90 years, there was unlikely to be an issue with the stability of the land under it..... particularly when no structural issues were raised in the survey.