Complaint re: structural survey, potential referral to Property Ombudsman, confusing response!

eddddy

Strummer22 said:

I expected the process to have a bit of back and forth, e.g. they may request to send an independent 3rd party to verify our claims. And if asked, we would seek quotes for the work. But as everyone knows, moving house is stressful and we just had a baby. There's only so much we have time to do! 

With a claim for tens of thousands of pounds, I suspect you will get very vigorous pushback from the surveyor and their insurers.

You might eventually have to hire professionals like a RICS Expert Witness Surveyor to write a report confirming that a competent surveyor should have spotted the problems - and to counter the arguments put forward by the surveyor/insurer.

You need to discuss with TPOS how to approach that, if you use them for Alternative Dispute Resolution.

The surveying firm would probably build a defence with technical arguments from their top-flight surveyors. You might need somebody with equal status, knowledge, etc on your side.


Or there is a concept called RICS "Single Joint Expert". If both parties agree, you jointly hire an expert - and you agree at the outset that you will both be bound by their decision.

 

Strummer22

eddddy said:

Strummer22 said:

I expected the process to have a bit of back and forth, e.g. they may request to send an independent 3rd party to verify our claims. And if asked, we would seek quotes for the work. But as everyone knows, moving house is stressful and we just had a baby. There's only so much we have time to do! 

With a claim for tens of thousands of pounds, I suspect you will get very vigorous pushback from the surveyor and their insurers.
 

Thanks for the info. We think this is pretty likely too - so we're very interested to see the response. Any indication of a settlement we would take as the insurer considering that the surveyor did, in fact, balls it up.

Jude57

I always thought that full, structural surveys were carried out by structural engineers, not surveyors. My old boss (chartered civil engineer) would have had apoplexy at the thought that a surveyor, however experienced and well qualified as a surveyor, could have the knowledge and expertise to provide such a report.

Times change and perhaps nowadays surveyors do carry out such inspections and provide such reports?

ETA Apologies that this isn't helpful and for thread drift.

Strummer22

Jude57 said:

I always thought that full, structural surveys were carried out by structural engineers, not surveyors. My old boss (chartered civil engineer) would have had apoplexy at the thought that a surveyor, however experienced and well qualified as a surveyor, could have the knowledge and expertise to provide such a report.

Times change and perhaps nowadays surveyors do carry out such inspections and provide such reports?

ETA Apologies that this isn't helpful and for thread drift.

In this instance Structural survey = Level 3 Building Survey

eddddy

Strummer22 said:

 Any indication of a settlement we would take as the insurer considering that the surveyor did, in fact, balls it up.

Assuming that the surveyor (and their insurer) accept liability, or you can prove liability - you would claim for your losses resulting from the surveyor's negligence or breach of contract.

i.e. How much money has the surveyor's 'wrongdoing' cost you?

But again, that's likely to be a topic for fierce argument.


As an example, I recall a case (I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember the principle)...

• A surveyor failed to spot a serious problem with the roof - and that it meant a new roof was required, at a cost of, say, £30k. Negligence by the surveyor was proven.

• But the surveyor argued that the roof was 20 years old, and a roof has an expected life-span of 40 years. So the buyer was only losing 20 years or 50% of the roof-life. So the damages should only be £15k, and the buyer should pay the other £15k. (Which is a generally accepted principle in these types of cases.)

• But in this case, the buyer argued that he wasn't expecting to have to pay £15k for another 20 years, and he didn't have £15k in savings, so that would be unreasonable. So the court decided that the surveyor should pay the full £30k  

babyblade41

I have taken someone to court for something similar especially if it's over 10k.
Firstly I had to get an expert in the field which I had to pay for (expensive)

This went into weeks of waiting for  a report , there were many things the expert witness agreed with me on & the final result was a refund of about half the amount & we each pay our own costs.

By the time I'd paid my legal expenses, expert witness report & all round stress going on months then  I wouldn't do it again unless it was for considerably more than 15k in my case 

You have to be damn sure that what you are claiming is 100 percent correct & the only way you will find this out is paying for an expert witness to look at it with a neutral eye 

At the end of the day you have to look at it objectively & ask is it really worth months of hassle, spending more money & may not even give you the result you wanted .

I was up against a small company but the surveyor will probably have huge backing plus financial resources that you may not have access too 

steampowered

You need to have a look at the Ombudsman website to see what powers the Ombudsman actually has.

Some Ombudsman (e.g. the Financial Ombudsman Service) have the power to award financial compensation. Most Ombudsman do not have this power.

If the Ombudsman does not have the power to award what you are looking for (i.e. financial compensation), then pursuing a claim against them is not very helpful, and you'd need to go down the legal route instead.