HT-2019-CDF-000012 - [2025] EWHC 1315 (TCC)

By an application notice dated 12 March 2025 the defendant (“Redrow”) has applied to strike out the claims for losses at paragraph 51 of the Schedule of Loss of the first, second and third claimants pursuant to CPR Part 3 or, alternatively, for the summary dismissal of those claims pursuant to CPR Part 24.

The substantive litigation concerns alleged fire-safety and other defects at the Celestia development in Cardiff (“the Development”), which was constructed in around 2004 to 2007. Redrow was the developer, and it engaged the first Part 20 defendant as the design-and-build contractor. The first to forty-first claimants sue as past or present leaseholders of flats at the Development and claim damages for breaches of their leases and under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 (“the 1972 Act”). The forty-second claimant (“CMCL”) is the management company of the Development. Very recently, Redrow and CMCL have agreed a works licence that will permit Redrow to carry out a comprehensive programme of remedial works in relation to the fire-safety issues.

The first and second claimants, Mr and Mrs Wilson (“the Wilsons”), were the leaseholders of two flats at the Development, having taken an assignment of the lease of one flat in 2012 and of the lease in another flat a little later. They paid the purchase price of each flat outright, without the need for mortgage finance. They say that in 2019 they had intended to transfer one of the flats to the third claimant, a company which they own and control, but that the discovery of additional fire-safety defects caused them not to do so. (It is now common ground that the third claimant has no claim of its own and should be removed from the proceedings.) In November 2024 the Wilsons transferred one flat to one of their three children and the other flat to another of their children, in each case as a gift. Thus they no longer own flats at the Development.

At the case management conference on 3 September 2024 I gave directions for, among other things, the service of schedules and counter-schedules of loss. At that stage, all the claimants were represented by Walker Morris LLP, on whose instruction they were represented by Mr David Sawtell. By the time of service of the claimants’ schedules of loss, however, the first, second and third claimants were representing themselves, as they are now. (The first claimant is a solicitor, though he does not have a current practising certificate.) The present application directly concerns only the defendant and the first, second and third claimants. Mr Sawtell, who continues to represent the other claimants, appeared at the hearing of the application principally to protect their interests. Neither he nor Ms Jessica Stephens KC, who appeared on behalf of the Part 20 defendants, made oral submissions at the hearing. Redrow has continued to be represented by Mr Andrew Singer KC and Mr Jonathan Ward.