The complaint

Ms W purchased a property in 2010, which she then decided to sell ten years later as she wanted to move to a different area. When she agreed a sale, the seller’s solicitor advised their client that part of Ms W’s garden did not in fact belong to her and was on a different title. Fortunately, the land was owned by the Local Authority who agreed to sell it to Ms W, so she was able to proceed with the sale. 

Ms W was unhappy that she was not aware of this beforehand. She wanted to complain to the solicitor who represented her in the purchase of the property, that they had failed to advise of the situation.  

When Ms W raised her complaint, she found that the law firm who had represented her had closed. She therefore did not receive a response to her complaint and brought the matter to us. 

The outcome

As we were unable to contact the firm, we were reliant upon Ms W to provide all of the evidence. We requested that she provide the documents she held in respect of the purchase (including any correspondence relating to the boundaries or title) by a specified date. Ms W did not respond to us, so we wrote to her and telephoned her. On that call Ms W promised to provide documents, but then failed to do so. 

We chased Ms W via email and a further telephone call in which we told her that we needed the documents by another specified deadline. Unfortunately, Ms W did not provide any documents. As we did not have any evidence to investigate Ms W’s complaint, we wrote to her to tell her that we were closing her file. 

In that letter, we explained that our Scheme Rules allow us to dismiss complaints where the complainant fails to provide information requested, which was the case here. Without the evidence that Ms W held being provided to us, we were unable to take matters forward for her. We therefore closed her file.