Home legal cover

[newhouse12345]

Hi,

Has anyone used home legal protection to file a case for misrepresentation or professional negligence?

We have just logged a case with our insurers but I'm sceptical about the whole process. Will they support us? Will we get the best advice?

Has anyone had a similar case? How were the insurance company? How did you find the process?

We are completely out of our depths with the situation but we really need to get professional advice. I really hope our insurance company will help us.

Any tips would be very welcome

Thanks 😊

The council have change the policy to include a 'visibility splay' which means our drive isn't wide enough. You need a 7.3m font of property!
Ours is 5m wide and we can park a transit van and a Mazda 3 on the drive with no hangover!
By their policy our drive isn't big enough for even 1 car! 🤷🏻‍♀️

@newhouse12345 the estate agent are the sellers rep, responsibility lays with them

Did the advert say "off road parking"? Pictures of cars in the drive?

How long ago did he buy the house? If recent enough, can you see from historic Google earth pics as to whether the drive predates him?

They only know what the seller tells them. Estate agents don't do any property checks. They wouldn't know if planning permission had been given for an extension for example.

The seller has to fill in legally binding forms about the property which they give to the conveyancing solicitor to verify.

I don't know if the seller can just say he didn't know that the drive was illegal 🤷🏻‍♀️

The advert says off street parking. The picture includes the drive but no car as no one was living in the property. It was vacant for 6 months before we bought the house. He was renting it.

He owned the house for about 15 years.
I think the person before him did renovations (back extension, loft conversions etc) I think they did the driveway as part of the renovations and then sold it to him. I think the person before him did the drive and then applied for a dropped kerb but it was rejected.

I don't know:
-was he was told about the drive when he bought the house?
-did he ever try to apply for a dropped kerb?
-did he receive the communication from the council about the parking consultation while selling it to us, That he didn't disclose.

I don't know if we have to prove that he knew 🤷🏻‍♀️ or is the fact that the information he provided was factual incorrect enough?

Legal insurance - they'll check you have a claim then, if you're covered - which you think you are, they'll ask you to submit all your evidence to the the panel solicitor to assess prospects of success and chances of getting the money you want.
Make sure you submit ALL the evidence you have - because if the solicitors don't see it, they can't assess it. So everything that supports your case and the result/ compensation you want,

The panel solicitors are regulated by their own professional bodies so have to be fair. They'll give an opinion. If they say it's not a goer you have the right to challenge that opinion - but you'll have to pay for that.
It's worth a shot though OP. Good luck.

@newhouse12345 it doesn't matter that the estate agent didn't know. They are the representative for the seller. Up to them to do checks, they are also experienced/regulated/qualified.

So you need to contact the estate agent as well - ask for clarity. Raise a complaint, get a dead lock letter.

This is for your records to give to your legal insurance to show you've exhausted all options.

Ps I would also send to the ombusman but not without advice from legal insurance.

Proposals for traffic schemes are included in the searches. Councils usually consult on parking schemes. So what info should have come up in the searches? I would be looking at this.

vision splays are safety measures to give drivers better visibility of road users.

We’re currently using a solicitor through our home legal cover. We’re taking a trader to court over breach of contract and damage to our home and have up to £50,000 in legal fees covered.
We could use the solicitors services to ask questions and get advice prior to them accepting our claim and they were pretty good.

They then asked us to submit a claim and I was skeptical and surpised that they would represent us because they didn’t cover certain home improvements.

Since then it’s been a mixed bag. The defence to the other sides claim was written pretty well but the paralegal messed up and didn’t send the signed version out at first. I spotted it and we got it in on time, thankfully, but he disappeared the day of the deadline and hadn’t sent all the documents needed and I ended up doing it in a panic. He handled mediation well but then got me to write the 230 page evidence document myself which he had for months without reviewing it then disappeared on holiday just prior to the deadline for submission.

I ended up finding out who his manager was and making a complaint. She filed it for us in the end but it was left so late I had to drive to the other parties house and hand deliver it to make sure it was there on time.

He didn’t understand when the court made a mistake and vacated the hearing so I have had to make dozens of calls to the court myself to sort this out. He advised me that other sides claim had been struck out (correct) but told me that was it and there was no come back (incorrect- the other party applied to reinstate it which was granted).

They sent a barrister to court for the reinstatement hearing who seemed to do a good job (although failed to block it) but the barrister changed last minute and our solicitor had no clue because he’d not kept in touch with them, I had to find this out.

The worst thing has been that court documents get sent to them only and I’m constantly having to chase them to pass things on, check they’ve done what they should have done. They promise they’ll do something on a certain date and when I contact them it’s always “I am planning to do this now” or there’s a delay responding and I get “”I have just done this and...”.

Also, because we’re represented and the other side isn’t the other side has had huge leeway with the court when they’ve missed deadline etc (which seems unfair when I mostly feel I’m representing myself anyway).

I have had to hugely micromanage them which is disappointing and has been stressful. We’ve considered firing them but a barrister in court would be helpful to us so we’re plugging on, hoping it will get better.

We didn’t have a choice of firm and I’ve since checked their reviews and they’re all terrible.

Someone with legal knowledge may know for sure, my I thought if you done something without planning permission and it wasn’t noticed, but was more than 7 years ago, then whatever has been built then can’t be challenged.
Is the dropped kerb over 7 years old?

LD?

Do you mean is it LD legal Services? No, DAS Law. Apparently they are the providers for legal cover for a lot of the insurance companies, unfortunately.

I actually got an email from them this morning asking for all the supporting documents.
As you said, they will assess against our policy to see if we are covered and then if covered it will go to a panel for the success to be measured.

One of their questions is the time frame between becoming aware of the issue and making a claim. Is there a set criteria for this?

I have spoken to the estate agent and they checked their files and said the seller told them it had off street parking in the contract.

I have bought and sold a few properties and the estate agents don't check anything. They are just selling off what they've been told. That's what you pay a solicitor to verify.

I agree they can't lie/ mislead, but it's not their job to check planning applications etc.

Apparently this doesn't appear in searches as it's not an official parking scheme. It's just implementation of a parking measure that was always allowed.
They have the right to install parking bats without consultation. If it were a CPZ then it would have shown.

But the seller was sent letters by the council telling him about the illegal drive and the parking bay, but he didn't disclose this to us. My concern is he'l just say he didn't know as he wasn't living there at the time.

Yes, obviously it's for visibility, but its not standard practice to have have them included in the policy in this way. No other local boroughs have such limited restrictions. If we lived anywhere else we would be accepted for a drive. Our front garden is more than big enough but we are trapped by policy.

There's a reason non compliance is soo high in the area. There are 75 houses in the same position on our estate!

This is really interesting thanks.

It already feels like a lot of admin! Just to get to this point.

When will you know the outcome?

Unfortunately this doesn't apply to highways applications! So frustrating as it's been a drive for about 20 years

The builder raised the claim in April this year (we’re going through the small claims court so it may be different to your situation). It was supposed to go to hearing at the beginning of September but the other party didn’t pay their fees. His claim was struck out and they were supposed to find another date to hear our counterclaim but in the meantime he applied to reinstate his claim.

That went to a hearing at the end of September (our barrister went instead of us) and they said his breach of the process was serious and his excuses weren’t accepted but because I’m counterclaiming they’d reinstate his claim. They said his claim was crap so he had to write a new one and they extended the deadline to submit evidence (supposed to be 24th August but he missed this as well) to the middle of November. Basically we’ve been told that the court is being very generous to him because he’s representing himself and I’m represented. It seems to give you a disadvantage in some ways.

He missed the deadline to resubmit his new claim and he hasn’t signed it. It’s also terrible with no legal basis so we’re applying to have it struck out again.

We’re supposed to be in court on the 6th December for a 3 hour hearing and that’s supposed to be the end but it could drag on, who knows!

I personally think you have a good case against your solicitors (and the impact on selling the house in the future should be considered) but just to warn you that this has been an awful experience for us. It may be different for you because the builder has made very personal attacks against us and he lives locally so we keep bumping in to him (and he reduced parts of our house to rubble to it’s been devastating) but it’s taken a lot out of us and we’ve had to put our lives on hold.

@Tsc2011

So he put a claim against you first?
I'm guessing you haven't paid him or something?

Are you expecting a lot of compensation?

It sounds very stressful, but I'm guessing you feel like us, that we feel we have no choice. We didn't do anything wrong. We paid for a full survey, instructed all the right people. But someone we are now in a really shitty situation.

I can't help but think the buck stops with our solicitor. I think the seller will plead ignorance unless we can prove he knew 🤷🏻‍♀️
Have you had to provide lots of evidence?
It's the solicitors job to verify and if they can't they should highlight the risk. They didn't do either.

It will 100% depreciate the value of our house which I think we should be compensated for.

@ouiouiouioui I'm currently using my house insurance for a claim and it's LD - they are very very very slow !

He started the plastering a year ago today (depressingly), it was supposed to take 3-4 weeks but he disappeared for a month after taking all the plaster off and then we struggled to get him back to plaster. He did very limited amount of plastering and then kept turning up asking for large sums of money. We had it in writing that all payments would be made upon completion of the work.

We made him an offer to change the payment schedule if he’d just turn up and do some work (this was 3 months in) and he declined it in writing and said he was walking off the job. We’d paid almost half of the cost of the job and received very little completed work. The quotes we’ve had to complete it are much higher than we agreed to pay. He also damaged floors and carpets when protecting the floors was in the contract.

We formally requested he come back to complete the work and he wrote back refusing. Then he sued us for 97% of the cost of the work (he claims he did 50% of the work (which he didn’t) so this makes no sense).

Our solicitor had been processing our claim at the time so this guy just jumped in and sued us first.

We’ve provided 236 pages of evidence (texts, email, photographs, quotes, letters, response to his response etc). My solicitor was overwhelmed with the amount we had (and he’s lazy) so I put the evidence documents together which took weeks in between family and full time work.

You said the seller had notice that the driveway was illegal? It’s not your fault if he didn’t read his letters. The letter was served by the council and it was his responsibility to maintain that property.