Housing Act 2004

170 Right of private action

(1) This section applies where a person (“the responsible person”) has committed a breach of duty under section 156 by failing to comply with a request from a potential buyer of a residential property for a copy of a prescribed document.

(2) If the potential buyer commissions his own version of the prescribed document at a time when both of the conditions mentioned below are satisfied, he is entitled to recover from the responsible person any reasonable fee paid by him in order to obtain the document.

(3) The first condition is that—

(a) the property is on the market; or

(b) the potential buyer and the seller are attempting to reach an agreement for the sale of the property.

(4) The second condition is that the potential buyer has not been provided with an authentic copy of the prescribed document.

(5) A copy of a prescribed document is not authentic for the purposes of subsection (4) unless—

(a) it is a copy of a document included in the home information pack for the property as it stands at the time the copy is provided to the potential buyer; and

(b) the document so included complies with the requirements of any regulations under section 163 at that time.

(6) In subsection (5) “the home information pack” means the home information pack intended by the responsible person to be the one required by section 155.

(7) In this section “prescribed document” means a document (being one required to be included in the home information pack by regulations under section 163) which is prescribed by regulations made by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this section.

(8) It is immaterial for the purposes of this section that the request in question did not specify the prescribed document but was for a copy of the home information pack or a part of the pack which included (or ought to have included) that document.