Sips and stones may break my bones...

17 minutes ago, curlewhouse said:

 - but once you've paid they will not let you speak to your solicitor!  

...

Your not allowed to speak to her either!  I've never come across this before.  

 

I agree with you, this sounds very odd!  Was this arrangement made clear in your original engagement documents?  Even if it was, I'd expect particularly timely replies to all written correspondence if they won't let you speak to anyone.  There's some useful guidance in the SRA Handbook.  If you think she's lying to you, ask her for copies of the correspondence she says she's had.

 

Given what's happened so far, I'd be having a word to the SRA or the ombudsman.  If you haven't gone through your firm's formal complaints procedure, you can't get the SRA formally involved yet, but they should be able to give guidance on what they consider acceptable behaviour.

I know, it's weird frankly. I am beginning to suspect it's because of their low cost scheme they maybe jealously guard their time spent, and thus avoid phone calls. When I couldn't get a reply on their normal number I rang their "sales" line - because no matter how bad firms are at answering phones, oddly they can always answer their sales lines quickly I've found. Sure enough, I got straight through and when I asked if I could speak to the person who has taken on the case I was told she was out, but she'd call me. When I asked for her extension number they flatly would not give it to me. At that point I said, I realised full well this person would not ring me and sure enough, she hasn't.

1 hour ago, curlewhouse said:

I am beginning to suspect it's because of their low cost scheme they maybe jealously guard their time spent, and thus avoid phone calls. 

 

I don't doubt that's right.

 

The thing in your favour (as i guess you know with your background) is that unlike the rest of us, solicitors have externally imposed standards they must meet. They can be low cost, and maybe even refuse to talk on the phone, but they do have to be responsive, and they have to keep their client's interests in mind when acting. The delays you're talking about seem to fall foul of both those requirements.

 

Possibly worth starting to keep notes about when you call, who you speak to, and what they say.

Does this firm have the initials PA.....???

 

As I had exactly the same experience and ended up complaining formally (ignored) and finally swapping to another when the vendor basically was going to pull the plug... 

Not that one PeterW - oddly, from yesterday they are now speaking to me... and deny ever refusing to  .  It may have been after I said I was going to contact the law society - .....or was that pure coincidence?

 

However, they've now thrown a massive spanner in the works by interpreting one word in the deed of easement we got because our driveway has to cross a section of village green. Basically, building society is about to pay out, and this solicitor is doing the usual stuff prior to the money going via their account (a totally unrequired step in this sort of mortgage but there you go) when they spotted that the solicitor who drew up the easement for  reasons best known to himself inserted the word "domestic" before vehicle - which effectively prevents any  commercial vehicle - so no deliveries, no tradesmen... and most disastrously right now, no builders! So they told the building society, who from being on the verge of releasing the funds are now saying that this means we cannot legally build the house as there's no right of access for building vehicles.... so they will no longer lend!  

Now this is resolvable, but creating an amended deed and registering it against the land with the land registry (as it was never the Parish Councils intention to do this, and frankly none of us noticed it) bill take 2 months at best, ut we are already running weeks late thanks to Buildloan faffing around for so long, and the SIPs folks want paid if they are to make our panels- or we will go to the back of the queue, ditto with the builder who is booked. 

 

So I'm down to 24 hours before the next Parish Council meeting after which there is not one for another month, and the current suggestion is that I get them to write a letter granting access to all vehicles for the purposes of construction, and pray the building society accepts that, then we look at a permanent  amendment to the easement at a later date (in reality, no one would ever have objected to a delivery van or whatever in future, but now it's been flagged to the building society we are stuffed!). 

 

I can honestly say now that if we'd anticipated so much stress as we have been subjected to by office bound warriors we would never have done this. If we could walk away from it now we would as this is the last straw. We'd expected the money through last week. Unfortunately we've put all our savings into getting it this far, but it seems I have to fight someone every day just to get them to do their job, nothing more, and frankly I have little reserves left.

Edited April 12, 2017 by curlewhouse

I read that differently. 

 

Domestic purposes is what is reasonable for the enjoyment of the dwelling as a residence.

 

It is reasonable to expect deliveries to a house and what I believe that clause is to stop is the use of the road for commercial purposes - for example you turning the house into a haulage yard. 

 

If that's not the case, how can you classify a "domestic vehicle" as the only way would be by the DVLA classification and I know that there is no "commercial" class in that data ...!

 

I would suggest you ask the PC to support the view above, changing that clause is irrelevant as it's not enforceable as it cannot be defined in law. 

@curlewhouse Also worth reading this - usually the vehicle is defined in the easement with the height / width / weight as they are tangible - and it does beg the question if that is even enforceable. 

 

http://www.boundary-problems.co.uk/boundary-problems/priv-r-o-w.html

I agree, it's an overly precise interpretation of the word, and the basic rule is that words used in legal documents should be interpreted to have their common meaning, but unfortunately, it's how the building society solicitor chooses to interpret it and his/her advice to the Building Society that's caused the issue.  I rang the solicitor who had drawn up the easement for the PC (paid for by us) and explained the issue, and said if I got the PC to agree, could he draw up the required  letter/"license" at my cost -  I did it in a calm and non-accusatory manner as it's far more important to resolve it than it is to look for blame, but interestingly he got immediately defensive and quite bolshy... saying it was our fault for not noticing he'd done that ... and no, he couldn't do it quickly as he's busy but would do it in a "reasonable time" - we're talking a 1 paragraph letter!  

 

So I drew up a document myself in 5 minutes, and emailed it to the building society solicitor.... who says yes, it's worded correctly the way I have done it. I wonder what that solicitor would have charged me when he eventually got round to it?

 

The Parish Council were brilliant, I'd emailed the clerk about the situation and was copied into an email from the Chair within a couple of hours, sent to the other Parish Councillors and the clerk saying she was anxious we should not feel discouraged and could they action this ASAP - I mean how nice is that?

So I went to the meeting and last night they signed the document for me.  I've attached the blank here just as an example if anyone is interested. I made it only for the duration of the build, though the PC said they'd be happy for it to be permanent. But that would need me to make it a deed and to have that registered etc would take more time than we have right now, so we also discussed the long term implications, and whether it would be worth me getting the wording changed on the easement (as the easement is registered to the village green so that would need doing all over again) and as they said, who on earth is going to A, know about it, or B going to try and stop us having deliveries from couriers or a tradesman call anyway? Plus, as a dyed in the wool DIYer, I'm likely to be constructing it in one form or another for the rest of my life ! 

 

Interesting that the solicitor got bolshy about it though and immediately gone for "blame" when I wasn't - I think he must have felt he'd screwed up. But it does show the danger of adding even one extra word into a legal document when there's no real need for it to be there.  Being in the National park, no one would ever get permission for it to be anything other than a house where it is, even if they wanted to, so the word is superfluous anyway.

 

So now we have to wait until after the bank holiday to get it to them and see if they change their mind about the wording or manage to think up something else to put in our way. They were rumbling last week about the fact that the easement is not registered against our land at the land registry. I pointed out that this is irrelevant as the easement exists, they have a copy, is properly drawn up and legal (a little too much in this last case), and is registered against the village green itself, and there is no legal requirement for it to be on our LR document (though it is more convenient as a rule for anyone who comes along later to buy the property in years to come, but that's going to be the least of my worries  ). But they may come back on this - I hope not as it would add weeks and weeks if they insist on it being registered as a deed rather than allow it as a licence.

 

I've asked them (for the 4th time) to check and be sure there is nothing else they want, to avoid this drip feeding of problems/documents they want (which is exactly what Buildloan did too and put us so off schedule - we seem terribly inefficient in this country about this sort of thing) , and just ask me for them all at once, (we could have resolved this a month ago if they had) and the only thing they thought they did not have was our architects indemnity insurance (which actually I had sent to one of the now 4 solicitors/paralegals who have handled our case there), so I've sent that off again plus uploaded it onto their case tracker system .... but we fully expect them to be looking hard for some other reason to halt/delay things from their form so far. I was saying to my wife that I'm actually mentally tired of having to fight people every inch of the way. I think what's made it harder is hardly any of it is "real", it's all just paperwork keeping solicitors rich and clerks in jobs. But at least being able to do some real work on the site has made us feel some progress is happening, though  the stress ending up so up against the clock was completely avoidable if these various folks had simply done their jobs - nothing more. I am at the point now where when I get in from work, I'm almost dreading checking my email for fear of what delay/halt they've managed to come up with this time. This last one was so out of the blue and at such a last minute stage.

 

 

EasementconstructionANONYMISED.pdf

Re: your not allowed to speak to her

 

I'm wondering if the company you paid subcontracts out the actual work to self employed solicitors. They may not want you talking direct in case the solicitor steals "their" customer. 

Well, we finally got there. Yaay! The solicitors eventually spoke to us and denied ever refusing to! By sheer coincidence of course, this was after I'd mentioned the words "Law society" - funny that.  anyway, they still kept throwing more spanners in the works (far too many to list) to the point where we asked them why they seemed to be actively going out of their way to stop it going ahead, and my normally calm wife sent them an email to "JUST GET ON WITH IT". . It also turned out they didn't need the architects indemnity anyway since we have a warranty! But that was quite typical of the experience and they persisted looking hard for any problems they could find even up to the Friday before the mortgage was due to complete on the Monday (after telling me all was now fine and they'd requested the funds and there were absolutely no further issues ) by sending an email after 5p.m on Friday so we couldn't call back, saying they'd decided one of our signatures didn't look quite right  so would need further verification! I mean you couldn't make this stuff up. So that left us from feeling we'd finally battled through and got there to an entire weekend (again) not knowing if it was all stopped again. I'm all for due diligence, but this timing was quite refined cruelty really on their part. The pressure was from the delays each time increasing the possibility of losing our place in the SIPs manufacturing queue and thus also our builder needing to schedule his guys, (so us losing a 2017 build) - both being very patient and reasonably with us despite me having passed on the promises of "soon"  which we were given by BS/BL & the solicitors, and which kept proving false over and over. It was embarrassing really.

 

 But anyway, despite their best efforts, the lolly came through and so once again we are moving forward. SIPs due in June!

 

So next is getting the remainder of the land levelled now the soil is dry, then also digging out the trenches for water and electricity.  I'll have to book some time off work and get a digger hired again.

 

Meantime I've made up the temporary building water supply as shown here.  There's a very specific layout you have to comply with form it (the legs you can see will be buried, and a lockable door has to be fitted).  So you have to have 15mm pipe, and from the bottom, stopcock , double check valve, drain cock, tap.  no good using a tap with a double check valve, you still have to have one fitted above the stopcock.  The drain cock is curious given that it will drain literally 1 foot of pipe! Belt & braces I guess. On the plus side, you pay a one-off charge of about £32 for as much building water as you need, which is fair enough and not excessive at all I think. 

 

I asked about the eventual permanent pipe connection as the paperwork says they will fit a "15mm water meter" - which had me wondering if they meant I had to run a 15mm pipe to it, which seems very odd. But the guy says no, run a MDPE 25mm pipe for that. So where the 15mm comes in I'm unsure - seems pointless running 25mm if the output from the meter is 15mm (though of course whilst your interior cold water pipes are 15mm, you'd think that wherever the smallest bore in the supply run is will limit it, so if it's 15mm at the meter, even having 25 after that won't improve flow - I'd planned to put 32mm in, but the waterboard guy says 25mm, so that's what I've had delivered).

 

As you can see in the diagram they show 15mm for the temp supply, but I struggled to get an answer as to whether I've got to run 15mm all the way to the main (as implied in that diagram) or if I can (as you'd expect) connect it to some 25mm for the undergound section. Theres nothing in their documentation to that effect, and you'd expect to be using MDPE underground really.

 

Meantime we are using the 2 IBC containers I picked up for an absolute song the other week, filled from a fortunately non metered source and several joined up hosepipes.