I believe my claim of £7604 is only the provable direct loss - that I am having to pay for the works the council are doing under the Section 20 and the bill should be sufficient? The bill is £7604. Is this sufficient proof? I am not looking for compensation, just that they pay for the cost of the Section 20. Thanks for your advice Andy (I am a novice, never been to Court before).

Thanks Andy, Is your view that their defence reasoning strong? I'm not a betting person but would appreciate a hint of my odds of winning the case? And is my next step to issue my claim via the small claims court or should I counter offer? I am prepared to go all the way to Court but may settle if the amount was closer to my claim. Blanked out copy of 2nd offer Sol letter dated 6th October 2022.pdf

Yes, no mention of section 36 ( I was re-reading the letter to double check). Claim was for £7604 inc vat

@Andyorchan offer to settle for £3500, admitting no liability, without prejudice save as to costs, along with a signed waiver signing away my rights to claim on any/everything else to do with the property going forward....but offer is only valid if I accept before Wednesday.

Thank you @AndyorchI really appreciate your help. The deadline to respond that they have given me is by tomorrow, would you be kind enough to have a look at this for me. Many thanks.

@stu007 @AndyorchI hope you dont mind me tagging you. Wondered if you would kindly be able to read my last post (with letters attached) and offer me guidance on how to proceed. Thank you.

Hello, I have enclosed my Letter of Claim. I have now received a response from the Solicitor, whilst not an acknowledgement to my Letter of Claim, it is his initial response and he has now upped his offer of goodwill payment as "without prejudice save as to costs". I thought it relevant to enclose a copy of the first offer of goodwill payment as the Solicitor in that letter admits that things could have been handled differently, which is the opposite of the latest letter. In summary my claim currently totals £ 7604, incl VAT for the cost of the Section 20 works but I am still not in receipt of the final bill as the work is yet to be fully completed (it may well go a little higher. Work should be complete by Christmas. It was meant to be competed back in July). The solicitor is offering £3500. I have requested a copy of my file (to include my conveyancing solicitors paperwork) under a Subject Access Request. I still await receipt. I would appreciate your thoughts on this offer, any next steps guidance as the negligent Solicitor has put a deadline of days on his offer which I received yesterday (8th October 2022) but is dated 6th October 2022. Also, if it is possible to put a % chance of success on my claim I would appreciate it. I'm fairly cautious in nature and dont want to take too much of a risk in losing the offer of £3500 if my chances are low of winning. Thank you for all your help in this matter, I do appreciate it. Blanked out Sol response 1st offer dated 26th January 2022.pdf Blanked out copy of 2nd offer Sol letter dated 6th October 2022.pdf Letter of Claim - scan.pdf

thank you - good to know. I have had no acknowledgement from them. Should I chase this to ensure that they can't claim non-receipt? (even though Royal mail confirmed receipt of the package).

Good evening, I have issued the Letter of Action. The next stage of the protocol is for the other party to acknowledge receipt of my claim. I have Royal Mail proof of receipt (so I know its been received) but the other party have not yet acknowledged. Day 21 will be in three days. If they do not respond, what would be my next step? Should I chase their acknowledgement? (This is not really covered in the protocol). Thank you.

Yes thats the section but I wanted to know who are the adjudicators? Is it a Company?, an ombudsman?

Good afternoon, I am currently completing the Letter of Claim and note the section (i) that I have to indicate if I am happy to refer dispute to adjudication & that I should propose 3 adjudicators or seek a nomination from the nominating body. I have spent hours trying to find out who this is and even approached the SRA who said they couldn't advise me. Is someone able to advise me on this, as to where I can get this information from? (searched this site too and couldn't find the answer.). Thank you.

This is was I put in my initial complaint - - Your firm should have advised us further on the implications of the LPE1. - That only sending a copy of the LPE1 and inviting us to raise any queries was not sufficient. - That your firm should have discussed the LPE1 in more detail given the circumstances of us not having purchased a leasehold property before. - By failing to provide detailed advice, as detailed above, you removed our options at the very least to renegotiate the asking price or to walk away completely. My partner and I would have withdrawn from the sale. We are risk adverse and with a better knowledge now of section 20, we would have viewed this as a complicated purchase, and withdrawn. We only mentioned the removal of our options, in the email above, to highlight the fact that this type of discussion would perhaps have taken place, but didn't, because no advice came forth from the solicitor. Would you kindly confirm that, by us mentioning these options, we have endangered our claim to recover the full costs? (Just t want to clarify - as you said this earlier ( "But you have a strong case for saying that any damages should be assessed by reference to the full additional cost. I say this based on your answer to my first question - had your answer been different I would have said you have no claim.")) Thank you.

Thank you. After now becoming aware of section 20 and what it involves via the Internet, I find it hard to believe now I would have proceeded based on what I have read. In my first complaint email I did say to them- by them not advising me, they took my options away to either withdraw from the sale or to renegotiate the asking price. Has that hampered my claim? (I don't think I would have renegotiated price personally as I am pretty risk adverse and as mentioned before, from what I've read, section 20s are messy and best avoided. With that knowledge I would have walked away.)

Thank you Mantis Shrimp for your opinion and information link. Am I right In thinking, once I've exhausted the Solicitors firms complaint procedure, my next step will be to bring a claim via the small claims court? Or should I go first to the Legal Ombudsman, then if still not happy, the Small Claims Court? If I was to ask you for a % chance of success with this claim, would you be able to offer me a %? . And would that change (decrease) if I continue to proceed asking for the full cost of the section 20 to be met? (Would the Judge feel I shouldn't have expected the full amount and think badly of me for bringing a claim for the full amount?). Thank you.

I would have not proceeded with the purchase.