Solictor arguing over plans and East and West

Abcynthia

Hi there
I'm hoping someone will be able to give me some advice. I don't want to drip feed but I also don't want to overload with info.

We are buying a house (Scotland). It is a former station from many, many years ago. The station is split into 2 properties, but the same family has owned both for the last 50 years and they were both on the one plan. Now due to a family death they are selling the lower property. We were basically nearing the end of the process, but we are having issues with our solicitor and it has now held the purchase up for at least 2 months (neither us or the seller are in a chain) 

Issue no 1.
The properties have seperate access roads. The deeds state the access road is to the West, which it is. However my solictor is ADAMANT the road is to the East making the deeds incorrect and causing him concern.
The road IS to the West. We have tried to show him this in a multitude of ways, but he just comes back with no it is the East. There is no road to the East at all! I don't really know what to do here. It's felt like all our protests have fallen on deaf ears. I've ended up asking so many people to see if anyone in any stretch of the imagination could interpret it as East...not a single person has managed to yet.
I would love to share the picture on here, but worry it may be identifying.

Issue no 2
The property's plan has now been split into 2 by a professional surveyor, using the plan that is registered with registers of Scotland. He has not amended the outside boundary in any way - just the internal to split it down the middle.
However when they provided this plan they also let my solicitor have a 180 year old hand drawn plan of the station. My solicitor is stuck on this old hand drawn station plan and says the current plan is not correct as the road end comes to a point instead of the straight edge as is in the 180 year old plan. They are demanding the sellers solicitors redraw the plan. It's very hard to see how he can argue with what is registered on the registers of Scotland and be using this very old plan to argue with. Does this sound usual?

We have brought up title indemnity insurance but the solicitor said that is only for minor issues, which he doesn't consider this is. He also followed up with "and we would have to let your lenders know that."

It's all been a bit strange arguing about West and East and I don't know what to do anymore. We had genuinely expected to be in before Christmas with time to spare. Does anyone have any advice here? Because I feel we will be stuck indefinitely in this back and forth slow argument. I dread to think how much money it is costing us!

silvercar

Your solicitor acts for you. If you are not satisfied with the way they are acting put in a complaint (all solicitor firms have a complaints procedure) or change solicitors.

east/ west issue sounds like someone is looking at the plans upside down.

RAS

Is this a sole practitioner? Or part of a company/firm? The latter will have a complaints procedure, try their website or your contract for details. Use it.

Section62

silvercar said:

Your solicitor acts for you. If you are not satisfied with the way they are acting put in a complaint (all solicitor firms have a complaints procedure) or change solicitors.

east/ west issue sounds like someone is looking at the plans upside down.

...or on the opposite side of the world where Abcynthia's East would be to the West and West would be to the East. 

Seems such a fundamental misunderstanding that if polite requests have failed then the complaints process would be a reasonable next step.

Herzlos

Have you spoken to the solicitor in person to get to the bottom of the East/West thing? Or asked if they can have another solicitor look at it? I can't help but wonder if it's a mistake like getting left/right confused, but it could also be something stupid like looking at the plans wrong. 

user1977

We'd see the plans to make any useful comment.

Abcynthia

Thank you for all the responses so far!

Trying to answer questions : 
They are a small local firm. I've just looked out the contract, the complaints procedure says to hand to....the solicitor that is dealing with our case. He is the top partner. Also I'm a little concerned about having to pay a huge fee to this solicitor as well as a new one. Especially as our mortgage offer is imminently going to run out and there's a chance we may have to pay a new valuation fee to extend it 😫

We are thinking a face to face meeting this week might be the way forward (although I promise we've sent all sorts of GIS maps to try and show him). We've only had one face to face meeting and it was a couple of months ago now.

Here is the plan. I've removed house names. The blue road is the access road. I would be so happy if someone could spot how they might be interpreting that as East.

Section62

Abcynthia said:

Here is the plan. I've removed house names. The blue road is the access road. I would be so happy if someone could spot how they might be interpreting that as East.

There's a North point on the plan, so not really much room for interpretation.  Unless the software used to create the plan is faulty or the North point has been added manually in the wrong direction.

Abcynthia

Section62 said:

Abcynthia said:

Here is the plan. I've removed house names. The blue road is the access road. I would be so happy if someone could spot how they might be interpreting that as East.

There's a North point on the plan, so not really much room for interpretation.  Unless the software used to create the plan is faulty or the North point has been added manually in the wrong direction.

Yep. And I checked the North point. It's correct.
I think when you have someone so adamantly arguing about compass points with you, you start to question yourself and reality. Especially when that someone is being paid to be the expert in the situation. 

user1977

What's the context for the wording about east/west? The Land Register is plan-based so compasspoint descriptions don't normally come into it .

Abcynthia

user1977 said:

What's the context for the wording about east/west? The Land Register is plan-based so compasspoint descriptions don't normally come into it .

I'll pop what they've said here incase it helps.

"Once again we would state that the original title describes the access as the road to the west.  The road which the sellers propose giving you access over lies roughly to the east and certainly not to the west."

They also said this today. The original railway plan is the very old hand drawn plan, which I'll pop below incase it helps to see what their concern is. Just a note that the old plan covers both properties, not just the one I've shown above.

"We agree that the road shown on the original railway title lies to the west and that s the road over which access is given. It is clear that that is not the road over which the sellers are offering access.  They are offering access on the blue area which lies approximately to the east but certainly not to the west.  The sellers can only grant access over either ground that they own or ground over which they have access but the access road is to the west and that is clearly shown on the railway title."

Also quick clarify : the blue road in the up to date plan belongs to the house in front, but access is given to the lower house. Just in case it was confusing why that's not on the old station plan.