A STRUCTURAL SURVEY OF NEGLIGENT REPORTS
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1987.tb01727.x |
Author | Michael Harwood |
Date | 01 September 1987 |
Published date | 01 September 1987 |
A
STRUCTURAL SURVEY
OF
NEGLIGENT
REPORTS
THE
question has recently been asked whether the failure
of
a
building society borrower to have his own structural survey done
“is capable
of
being contributory negligence” in an action against
the building society valuer.’ It is an important question.
Mrs.
Thatcher has said, “What
I
desperately want is to create one
nation with everyone being a man
[or
woman?]
of
property.”*
Presumably she does not want her new person
of
property
to
pay
the price for a home, only to find that, because of structural
defects, he has become the owner
of
an uncleared building site3
and the full loan still to be repaid
to
the building society under the
personal covenant contained in the mortgage. Building societies
and banks also are anxious
to
extend the frontiers of owner-
occupation; yet they are increasingly aware that the “new man,”
the first time house buyer,
is
likely
to be on the financial margins.
The Halifax, for example, has introduced a “low start mortgage
scheme: a new scheme
to
help first time buyers make an early start
in home ownership.” In
Sutherland
v.
C.
R.
Maton
&
Cobb
J.
noted that the plaintiff purchaser could not afford his own
survey in addition to the building society survey. This must be
typical. Further, entry into owner-occupation is hardly a matter of
choice. Like the pedestrian who walks on the road because the
pavement is blocked, the purchaser has
little
choice; the private
rented sector decline continues; for the first time in its history, the
stock
of
local authority housing has decreased and waiting lists are
as long as ever.5
Yet building societies, builders and surveyors, those with a
vested interest in the sale of houses and the extension of owner-
occupation and who hold themselves out as the experts in the field,
are attempting
to
shift a potentially disastrous
loss
resulting from
’
Howel Lewis in
(1985)
N.J.L.
1047,
speaking
of
Yianni
(n.3
hclow).
*
Quoted in
The
Sunday Times,
February
27, 1983.
’
Figures (taken from Housing and Construction Statistics)
for
local authority
As
in
Yianni
v.
Edwin Evans
&
Sons
I19821
Q.B.
438.
119761
E.G.D.
657.
permanent dwellings started and sold
1982-6
are as follows (England and Wales):
Slurred
Sold
1982 29,707 201,880
1983 29,633 141,615
1984 23,609 103,150
1985 18,703 93,145
1986 12,577 65,160
(first three quarters)
In Glasgow alone there
is
a waiting list
of
44,000
with an average waiting time
of
41
years; see
The
Guardian,
February
5,
1986.
Last year the London Borough
of
Camden
completed nine houses compared with
1,OOO
in
1978-79;
had
11,OOO
names on its housing
list which it admits
is
little more than a register; and turned away
8,500
homelcss
applicants,
(The
Guardian,
March
3, 1987).
588
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