[2023] UKUT 00282 (LC)

As we noted above it is the claimants’ case that the condition of the building has deteriorated as a result of the respondent’s works. Factual evidence about the condition of the building before and after the works has been given by the claimants themselves. Their evidence was entirely unchallenged (Ms Ward KC did not cross-examine them).

In very brief summary, the claimants’ evidence was that after the works were carried out they observed increased levels of damp in the house, to the extent that the dining room (whose floor is below ground level) can no longer be used. They observed deterioration in the condition of floor slabs and pointing, and cracking – some of it new, some of it an increase in the width of previously existing cracks. A large crack appeared along the staircase from ground to first floor on the south-east side of the property. The external wall on the that side of the property now bows outwards, and did not do so before the works were carried out. Cracking in the garage has widened. The concrete around the swimming pool appears to the claimants to have moved, and they see a “large discrepancy” between the water levels at the two ends of the pool.

The claimants have been advised that their garden cannot be re-planted due to water levels and the salinity of the soil. They are concerned that their property has been rendered unmarketable because insurance renewal will be difficult and because it will be impossible to obtain a survey report that would be satisfactory to a mortgagee.

The claimants can of course give evidence only of fact. They are not expert witnesses (despite their considerable experience of historic buildings and their keen interest in conservation) and so cannot give evidence about either the severity or the likely cause of the changes they have observed in the condition of the building; accordingly this preliminary issue about causation turns on expert evidence.