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Blind tennis ace wins £50,000 after home surveyor missed Japanese knotweed

A visually impaired tennis champion has won £50,000 in compensation after a surveyor failed to spot “visibly present and growing” Japanese knotweed in the garden of his £1.2 million Highgate home.

Paul Pyb, 49, ordered the highest-level survey of the ground-floor flat because his sight problems prevented him from inspecting it himself, and was told the property was in “excellent condition both internally and externally”.

The former financier, who lost his central vision in 2007 and is now a multiple visually impaired and blind tennis champion, hired St John’s Wood-based Conways Chartered Surveyors before buying the Victorian property in 2014.

The following year, his gardener spotted the knotweed, leading to a lengthy and expensive battle to excavate and eradicate the bamboo-like plant.

Mr Ryb sued the surveyors and won £50,000 for the damage and disruption he endured, and he has now been awarded up to £90,000 from the company to cover his legal bills.

Conways argued its experienced surveyor “knew what Japanese knotweed looked like and if it had been there for him to see, he would have seen it”. But Judge Jan Luba QC, sitting at the Mayor’s and City of London county court, ruled against the company, saying: “I am amply satisfied that Mr Ryb has demonstrated, well beyond the balance of probability, that Japanese knotweed was visibly present and growing in the garden at the date of the inspection in September 2014.”

Japanese knotweed grows at an alarming rate and has the potential to damage paving and buildings. When it was eventually discovered at Mr Pyb’s home, he spent £10,000 uprooting it and recruiting specialists who used mechanical diggers to excavate massive amounts of contaminated soil.

The knotweed returned in 2017 and 2018, although by this time Mr Ryb had secured insurance covering such a possibility, the court heard.

Judge Luba said the Conways surveyor was “old school” and his work “did fall short of the standard to be required of a reasonably competent surveyor”. “In the course of his survey, he had taken no photographs. He had drawn no plans. He had taken no measurements. This job gave rise to no special features that singled it out in his memory.”

Mr Pyb, who is the former British number one of visually impaired tennis, gave evidence to the court, and was commended by the judge for being “calm and measured in spite of the difficulties his poor eyesight caused him when dealing with documents, plans and pictures”.

The £50,000 compensation also reflected the reduced value of the property in 2014. Mr Pyb had argued he would have put in a lower bid for the flat or pulled out of the purchase altogether if he had known about the knotweed.