[2023] UKUT 00282 (LC)

The King’s Lodging stands by the River Stour in Sandwich, and its garden is separated from the river by a wall. When the claimants purchased the property in 1991 and for some time before then the wall was of brick and concrete, and we refer to it as “the old wall”. In 2014 as part of a flood defence programme the respondent constructed a steel sheet piling wall alongside the property about 1m further out into the river (“the new wall”), filled the space between the two walls with free-draining material, and capped the space between them with a concrete apron.

From early 2015 until 2019 on a number of occasions water appeared in the garden. From 2015 onwards the respondent carried out further work to prevent flooding in the garden, but nothing has been done since the last incident in January 2019. The house is centuries old and has a wooden frame. Surveys carried out before the work report it as being in satisfactory condition for its age, with a number of hairline cracks indoors and some areas of damp in walls and floors on the ground floor. Since the work has been done, some of those cracks have widened, more cracks have appeared, and the south-east front of the property bows outwards. New areas of dampness have occurred and there has been a deterioration of paint and plaster at the previous damp patches.

What the claimants say is that water levels in the ground have been raised as a result of the respondent’s works so that the house has been damaged, and will deteriorate further, because its wooden frame is now standing in wet ground, and moreover that the garden has flooded and will continue to do so because of the respondent’s works.

The respondent’s case is that groundwater levels have not been changed by the works, that the house has not been damaged by the works and will not deteriorate in future as a result of the works. As to the flooding, the respondent’s pleaded case was that the flooding problem has been solved, but its expert witness Mr Groves agrees with the claimants that inflows of water will recur at particularly high tides. However, he says that this will not be a problem for the garden or for the house.