Instructions were received from the owner of a property formerly occupied by a High Street Bank, in Shropshire.  The former tenant had vacated, leaving the property in a dilapidated condition.

The landlord’s building surveyor produced a terminal schedule of dilapidations totalling approximately £220,000, which did include some works for which the former tenant could legitimately argue where not their responsibility under the lease terms. The landlord’s building surveyor assessed the value of the claim at just £22,000.

The tenant subsequently instructed an experienced valuer to prepare a Diminution Valuation under Section 18 of the Landlord & Tenant Act, which concluded that the value of the landlord’s interest had in fact only been diminished by some £12,000.

We accepted the landlord’s instructions to prepare our own Diminution Valuation on his behalf and proceeded to represent our client in the claim process, culminating in our attendance of a mediation hearing which resulted in a settlement at a level of £110,000, providing our client with a considerably higher level of compensation for the dilapidations claim than had previously been offered.