A couple that bought a £625,000 home in 2010, only to find the next year that plans were afoot for two large housing developments nearby, have failed in a claim that the sellers should pay damages for misrepresentation on the seller’s property information form (SPIF).
In a decision made in Birmingham last week, Judge David Cooke said that John and Elizabeth Thorp “could and should have made their own enquiries” as to the impact of planning policies on the area around Oakwood Lodge, Pulley Lane in Droitwich Spa in Worcestershire, when they bought the property from Timothy and Claire Abbotts.
He said: “If the Thorps had been concerned to avoid any such risk of nearby development at all, as they now state, it is in reality hard to see how they could safely purchase anywhere. If they wanted to evaluate the degree of risk in the vicinity of Oakwood Lodge, they could and should have made their own enquiries into the planning position and possible future planning policies.”
The Thorps alleged that truthful answers to the questions asked on the SPIF would have revealed proposals for large-scale development in the vicinity of the property which would have caused them to withdraw from the purchase.
However, the Abbotts maintained that their answers were true because the only development in prospect at the time of sale was one which does not affect the property and so was not required to be disclosed by them. The possibility, which has since become reality, of development at another site which may affect the property was not such as to require disclosure.
Rejecting the claim, the judge said that the experts agreed that plans for 740 homes at Copcut Rise, 250m to 300m away from Oakwood Lodge, would not affect the value of the property, and that the Abbotts were under “no duty” to warn the Thorps of the possibility of an 800-home development half a mile away at Yew Tree Hill, for which outline permission was sought in 2011.
The judge said that the Thorps’ answers in the SPIF were not misrepresentations, and that, even if he had concluded there was any misrepresentation, he “would have found it to have been neither negligent nor fraudulent, but that the statements made represented the defendants’ honest opinion reasonably held at the time”.
Thorp and anr v Abbotts and anr Chancery (Judge David cooke) 22 July 2015
Andrew Maguire (instructed by Quality Solicitors Parkinson Wright) for the claimants
David Warner (instructed by Whatley Weston & Fox) for the defendants
