Legal Ombudsman Service: maximum award of £50k. Twice.

Wingrove Law advised homeowners on a professional negligence claim against their conveyancers for losses arising due to a delay in their new home warranty cover being incepted after legal completion.

The warranty cover note should have been received by the conveyancers before completing the purchase. They omitted to ensure it was. The warranty cover note was issued around 1 month after completion. Under the policy terms, patent (visible/discoverable) defects in the property at legal completion were not covered by the 'builder warranty' section of the policy.

The builder went into receivership. The homeowners claimed on their warranty. They then discovered they were uninsured in respect of the remedial works required to put right patent defects to the value of over £51,000.

Wingrove Law advised the owners on pursuing a complaint via the Legal Ombudsman ("LeO") as part of the professional negligence pre-action protocol procedure before starting court action. The LeO is an approved ADR scheme for the purposes of the protocol.

The conveyancers denied the claim, challenged (unsuccessfully) the LeO's jurisdiction to consider the complaint, and refused to accept the LeO's Preliminary Decision. The owners referred the matter to an Ombudsman to make a Final Decision.

Both the Preliminary and Final Decisions found for the owners and both times the owners were awarded the maximum financial award of £50,000.

Maximum awards are almost unprecedented.