We hired LABC to give our new build house a warranty and

Hello and thank you for your question. My name is ***** ***** I will be very pleased to assist you. I'm a practising lawyer in England with over 15 years’ experience. Please be aware that although I will endeavour to reply to you promptly, I am also in full time private practice and so I may not be available to respond immediately and it may also take me a few minutes to prepare a reply. The site will notify you as soon as I respond. I look forward to working with you to answer your question fully.

I'm sorry to read of the above. You refer to "hiring" LABC. this is a further that this was a property you built yourself using contractors on land you already owned or was it a new build property built from a commercial developer please?

1. thank you. Have you raised the issue with the contract he retained to build the property or in the event you instructed multiple contractors in this respect personally, the relevant contractor that was responsible for this element?
2. how long ago roughly was the property completed?

I was enquiring in relation to my first question whether you have raised the failure to install the relevant joints properly or at all as the case may be with either your architect or contractor according to whoever's fault it is in respect of the failure to install?

thank you. From what you say, has the architect accepted liability in respect of the issue? If so, why have they only offered you half of the likely costs of rectification? have you accepted this offer?

thank you. Why do they believe they are only 50% liable? this would suggest they consider that somebody else is jointly liable? Have they offered a view as regards ***** ***** is?

1. thank you. Finally, was the issue that the architects of the do not specify for the joints to be installed?
2. would I be correct to understand that you retained LABC for the purposes of building regulation compliance and warranty or just a warranty?

thank you. the building regulation contract is relatively narrowly defined service. The role of a building inspector for this purpose is to ensure that a project is compliant with building regulations and ultimately, to provide a final building regulations completion certificate. It is not the job of the building inspector to specifically identify design flaws or supervise construction beyond the above narrowly defined obligations.

As such, I do not readily see how the architects can seek to pass partial liability to the building inspection company on the basis they could have identified the fault sooner because this is not their role. Their role is to identify compliance with building regulations and in this respect, they appear to have done so and that they have identified this issue later than otherwise they could have done I do not see put them in breach of their above narrowly defined role in and of itself.

It seems to me therefore that your claim in relation to additional costs you are incurring which plainly is not your fault, lies with the architect and they should be offering a full indemnity in this respect. To the extent that they are refusing to do so, you may need to consider refusing their offer and advising that unless they are prepared to offer a full indemnity in this respect, you will need to ultimately consider issuing proceedings in the County Court to make a recovery.

if this becomes necessary, the simplest way to do so is by using the courts online issuing service:

https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money

on the face of it, as you can show that the architect is in breach of contract and negligent, it follows that if you can demonstrate this to be the case, you can claim any and all costs that you can show are a direct an unavoidable consequence which would include on the face of it the above cost

I'm glad the above answers all your questions for now. If you have any follow up questions please revert to me.