The Bradford and Bingley Building Society has launched a £20m High Court claim against Hays Commercial Services Ltd, trading as Hays Business Services, following an incident in which a ten-year-old boy slipped through a security fence and set fire to a storage warehouse at Egerton Road in Erdington, Birmingham.
The claim alleges that approximately 67,000 packets of property deeds were destroyed in the November 1998 blaze and more than 3,000 deeds suffered water damage as firemen fought to put out the fire. The packets relate to 60,991 residential properties in England and Wales, including 18,608 deeds to unregistered land, with the balance of the deeds being for properties in Scotland or Northern Ireland. The society puts the cost of replacing each deed at: £580 for unregistered English titles; £75 for registered titles; £370 for unregistered Scottish titles; and £470 for unregistered Northern Ireland titles; and claims the total cost of reconstituting the packets is more than £17m.
The society alleges Hays claimed to be the UK market leader in archive storage, offering a unique storage system providing absolute security. However, the claim says that nine days before the blaze, another fire was started by a child, or children, in an unattended transit van outside the warehouse. The society claims Hays knew that the child had gained unauthorised access to its premises and accuses the company of negligence, misrepresentation and breach of contract, claiming total damages of £20m.
PLS News 23/5/00
