Subterranean Development Bill [HL]

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Friday 10th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft]

My Lords, my attention was drawn to my noble friend’s Bill by my own experiences in this area. I was born not far from here, in Montague Square in Marylebone. We lived in what I suppose was a terraced house—a larger terraced house in a large square in London. We lived there for a long time. I was born, as were my sisters, in the same room that my father had been born in some 40 years before. Luckily they had redecorated it in between.

During the time that we lived there, a number of changes took place. My noble friend Lord Henley’s father and grandfather lived on one side of us at about the same time as we did. I do not know who lived on the other side of the house, but their tenure was interfered with rather substantially and seriously in 1941 when the Luftwaffe dropped a bomb on the house and turned it into a pile of rubble. My family was obliged to leave our house from 1942 until the end of 1945, when they were allowed back in to clear the dinner things and generally tidy up.

As we grew up in that house, my sisters and I always knew that the dining table could be laid only about 10 minutes before lunch, otherwise the silver would slide down the table and end up in a heap on the floor. When we opened the drawers of our dressing tables, all our clothes would be at either the front or the back, depending on the angle at which the table was standing, because the house clearly leaned about two or three inches across as a result of the neighbour’s house having been turned into rubble. It was nothing to do with what we had done, or with what the neighbours had done. It was just a fact of life.

Eventually, my mother persuaded my father that we could not go on living in a house of that size in that part of London. We sold it in 1968. I do not remember the circumstances because I was only 11 years old. However, I remember that we sold it to a very grand Saudi prince; I remember him coming to the house in his head dress and everything, as they did in those days. Rather more importantly, I also remember that five days after we sold it to him and moved out, the entire house fell down. Unsurprisingly, he was quite annoyed about this but we were able to prove that it was not our fault. Whether the Saudi prince then went on to sue the Luftwaffe, I do not know.

Many years later, my circumstances having deteriorated to the point where I no longer had a butler to lay the table and could no longer afford to live north of the river, I moved into a house in Clapham—my first ever family home, which was a medium-sized south London terraced house. It had quite a nice little cellar, which was not mentioned on the particulars. I doubt that the estate agent who put the particulars together had ever been down to the cellar, so as purchasers we had no means of knowing whether it should be there. Clearly, the local authority and whoever did the search were not aware that it was there. However, some time after we moved in, we discovered that a previous owner—we had no idea who it was—had made that cellar. They had dug down to it and dug just beyond the footprint of the house. The result was that we ended up in a 10-year battle with neighbours and insurers over who would pay for our cracked walls and the neighbours’ cracked walls, and whether trees were to be removed.

The point is that the damage occurred long before we were resident in the house. I imagine that the matter was still being argued about long after we left. It was damage that was not registered by the estate agents; nor did the local authority know about it. There must be an enormous number of houses in London where the local authority does not know that a cellar has been created or, more likely, has been enlarged because many of the old particulars are not as accurate as they used to be.

Within 100 yards’ walk of where I live now, in Chelsea, there have been two such calamities in the past 10 years, one involving a very large house. Some very rich Italians had built a swimming pool in the basement and woke up one morning to find that the floor above was in the swimming pool. The following morning the entire house came down.

In his Bill, my noble friend has made a number of provisions for when such things happen. However, they will work only in certain circumstances. They will not work in circumstances where the owners—in this case, Italians—quite rightly packed their bags and went back to Italy; where the architect found that he could not get hold of the builders; and where the builders packed up and went back to Ireland. Nobody was liable, nobody was going to pay and there was no insurance. Although the liability of builders, architects, chartered surveyors, owners, et cetera is covered by my noble friend’s Bill, we will need to look at it closely in Committee.

The most recent occasion occurred very close to the previous one, around the corner in Chester Street, where somebody had sought to make a gym in what used to be the old coal cellar and out under quite a narrow street. The street was wide enough for a garbage truck to get down but, unfortunately, it then turned out that the strength of the road surface was not enough to carry the garbage truck. The people who had built the gym found the garbage truck in it, having come through the road surface. It also damaged the houses opposite in that narrow street and the houses on either side. Five big, valuable, expensive Chelsea houses were damaged by one garbage truck going into one person’s small underground extension.

There is a whole range of different ways in which these problems can occur. As shown by the information backing my noble friend’s Bill, the terrifying thing is that this problem is growing at an enormous rate. I am staggered by the number of developments going on in some parts of London, even within the same street. One does not have to be a chartered surveyor—which I am not—to work out how dangerous it potentially is for the whole area. I am also horrified by the number of injuries to builders who vanish down large holes that they did not know were there. Maybe they did know that they were there but did not take account of them.

The last point that I draw to your Lordships’ attention, which we need to look at in Committee, should we reach that stage, concerns Clause 4, which deals with notice periods for letting people know that you are planning to develop and giving them the right to reply within a certain period. Clause 4(2) reads:

“Where an adjoining owner does not notify the building owner in writing within 14 days … a dispute is deemed to have arisen”.

Several noble Lords have talked about the balance between needing regulation and allowing people to do constructive and useful things to their houses if they want to. Balance is important in this. We do not want to overregulate. However, I worry that 14 days—in the holiday period, for example—is quite a short notice period, although you do not want to make it too long. That is something to look at and talk about further in Committee.

My noble friend Lord Bridgeman talked about the need for balance. This is a balanced Bill; it certainly attempts to be balanced. That is what we shall have to look at carefully in Committee. In the mean time, I, too, welcome the Bill and thank my noble friend for bringing it forward today.