Rewriting defective premises law

The House of Lords has just taken a bulldozer to defective premises law in the shape of D. & F. Estates v Church Commissioners [1988] 3 WLR 368, which will be published in the next issue of the Journal. The facts were reported fully in Structural Survey 6/3 when the Court of Appeal considered the case, but relate mainly to defective plastering carried out by subcontractors. The owners and occupiers of the premises unsuccessfully sued the main contractors for failing to supervise the subcontractors. This point was fairly narrow, but the House of Lords took the opportunity to declare its new views on building law generally. Textbook writers and practitioners, who have become accustomed to working with Anns v London Borough of Merlon [1978] AC 728 and its successors, will need to take considerable notice of the resulting picture.