HT-2022-000311 - [2024] EWHC 3569 (TCC)

For all those reasons, I consider that it is just and equitable to make the Building Liability Order.

I said at the outset that, if made, the terms of that order would be that the relevant liability of Click St Andrews is also the liability of Click Group Holdings. In that context, the liability must, in my judgment, be the relevant liability only because that is the only matter in respect of which the Act gives me the jurisdiction to make such an order.

However, in the course of argument, Mr Levenstein submitted that the Building Liability Order would or should extend to liability in respect of all of the leaseholders' losses whatever the breach from which they arose. He argued, but did not develop the argument, that section 130 acted as a gateway to a broader order as to the liability of an associated body corporate.

I simply do not see how that argument can be made out. The leaseholders' individual losses largely, if not entirely, flowed from the water ingress that occurred in July 2021. The water ingress, and the carrying out of the works which gave rise to it, did not give

I cannot, however, see anything that requires me to quantify the liability in respect of the relevant liabilities as set out in my judgment at the point of making the Building Liability Order. That is particularly relevant here because of the potential issues in identifying what losses, beyond the cost of remedial works, flow from the relevant liability and not the water ingress. It may in future often be the case that such a Building Liability Order will be made in terms of liability for an amount, particularly if, as here, the order is being made following a trial which has identified the extent of the liability in monetary terms. But it does not seem to me that I am required to do that and to make an order in an amount. At present, there are no figures before me which would enable me to do so, or at least to do so without considerable further interrogation of the spreadsheets that have been produced for the purposes of this hearing. That is not a reason not to make the order in terms that reflect the wording of section 130.

Therefore, the order that I will make, subject to any further refinement of the language, is a Building Liability Order providing that the relevant liability of Click St Andrews Limited to the leaseholders, as set out in my judgment, is also the liability of Click Group Holdings to the same leaseholders.