I had basement Flood damage here last year £24,000 estimated

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Who paid for the £24k damage?

and now the water company is contesting what exactly?

You have probably seen a pop-up offering you the chance of a telephone call at an extra cost.

It is up to you whether you have a telephone call or not but do bear in mind that a 15-30 minute telephone call covers an awful lot of ground and you can get an awful lot of information in that time.

So you can ignore it or go ahead or go ahead later.

It’s your choice.

Meanwhile, we can carry on on here.

Your potential claim is in negligence:

It will help if I explain how claims in negligence arise.

There needs to be

1. a duty of care

2. the duty of care needs to be breached

3. as a result of the breach there needs to be loss or injury

4. the loss or injury resulting from the breach must be reasonably foreseeable.

In order for there to be a claim in negligence, all 4 heads have to be satisfied.

Although a party may be able to opt out of negligence claims in respect of damage to property by having a contract or disclaimer, it is not possible to opt out of personal injury or death as a result of negligence.

The relevant statute is the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA).

However even a disclaimer in respect of negligence claims with regard to damage to property will only be applicable if it passes the UCTA test of “reasonableness”. You would need to Google the Act to get all the details of that but basically a person can’t exclude liability for claims in negligence in respect of damage to property to basically do what they like, and drive a coach and horses through all their obligations.

It is point number four that they would probably escape liability because it’s not reasonably foreseeable that tree roots would damage the drains UNLESS there are obviously trees around in which case it becomes more complicated because it would be necessary to bring the owner of the trees in a second defendant.