Paul Jackson Chartered Surveyors & R.I.C.S.Registered Valuers

In response to this complaint I feel it only appropriate to explain the circumstances of the proposed survey inspection. The house was situated on a very large Local Authority housing estate which is built on the 'Radburn' layout with restricted vehicular and segregated pedestrian access. The satellite navigation system gave us access to a cul-de-sac to which we then parked up and attempted to find the property. There were no obvious signs of the property address available and at that particular point in time there were extreme weather conditions with torrential rain and there was no one around to ask directions. We then spoke to the vendor on three separate occasions requesting help to try and locate the property, and she herself admitted that everybody had great difficulty in locating and I ended up spending at least 20 minutes walking round and then driving to a different part of the estate but without success. It was at this stage and probably 45 minutes then after the initial appointment date we tried to contact the owners once again, whose landline was on a secure message system and then failed to receive any further response. Without any abatement to the extreme and torrential rain at the time there was no opportunity of completing the survey. Firstly we had insufficient time to complete the inspection and more importantly we would have been unable to have taken site notes due to what can only be described as torrential rainfall that caused not only problems in the Birmingham locality but also the rest of the country. It was then that I contacted my office to request that an email be sent to the Client to explain the situation and that the next available appointment would be in approximately two weeks' time due to the volume of work. I can understand the client’s frustration at our failure to complete the inspection at the appointed time, but we were left with no option due to extreme weather conditions and the difficulty of locating the property. We would have rearranged the appointment at our earliest opportunity and even found a cancellation that had occurred during the course of the next fortnight although the potential Client decided to withdraw instructions and was then reimbursed his survey fee and we apologised for the fact we could not complete the inspection at the time.