Local Councils and their liability?

[PhantomReclaimer]

Does anyone know anything about the potential liability of a local Council as regards it negligently signing off on substandard building work?

 

Here's the story.

 

I had a very interesting conversation with a roofing contractor today regarding a potential HUGE problem looming round the corner for local Councils. The chap was round at a property I have quoting me for a patching job on a small leak on a flat roof and told me about this little problem.

 

Back in the 80's it seems that the Government had a grant scheme that dolled out vast piles of cash to householders to have their properties re-roofed, up to 90% of the cost of the work was available by all accounts. Anyway, as you would expect, all sorts of dodgy types started up in business to do this work to tap in to the drain pipe of free money. These guys used the cheapest materials and the quickest methods to get the work done in very short order. One of the things they did was to replace the original slate tiles with modern concrete ones which were 2.5 times the weight of the originals. Twently years or so down the line lots of rooves are now sagging or causing walls to bow due to the weight because they never strengthened the roof timbers.

 

This is where it gets interesting. My informant claims that there is a property just round the corner from mine that had this very problem. The current owners apparently were highly displeased, as you would be, and have apparently successfully sued the local Council for negligently signing off on the work when it clearly wasn't suitable. Now, I'm not entirely sure what a Councils liability for this type of thing actually is, or to whom, but it might make for an interesting investigation. Curiously, when you look about the surrounding streets you can see various properties with brand spanking new rooves covered in modern lighteweight man made slate tiles. Re-roofing isn't something that is particularly common so I'm just wondering if people have already started agitating and the Councils are paying up?

 

Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

P.