Water Coming Through the Ceiling from the Flat Above: Which Door Do You Knock On First?

The question many people ask: I have told the management office — now what?

You are treating this as a question about who to contact. It is a question about order — because every step does not merely help or fail to help you, it also creates or destroys evidence, and the cheapest, most obvious step is often the one that destroys it fastest.

The thirty-second version

• The government machine is not yours to switch on. From "is there a nuisance" through "should a notice be served" to "should this go to court", every step in the Ordinance belongs to the Authority. You are not a party to any of it.
• Close to half of the investigations that reach a determinate outcome end with no source found. In 2025, of 10,481 determinate outcomes, 5,155 found no source — 49.2%. But that is not the denominator you live in: of the 44,548 cases handled that year, the source was identified in 5,326 — 12.0%. Both are true, but they are not two ways of saying the same thing: 49.2% counts a failure (no source found) and 12.0% counts a success (source found), and the numerator differs as well as the denominator. Put on one line — on the determinate-outcome denominator, the source was identified in 5,326 of 10,481, which is 50.8%.
• "Source not identified" is not a finding that there is no seepage. In one case a tribunal read exactly such a closure letter and still found that damage to the external wall was one of the sources.
• The cheapest step can be the one that destroys the evidence fastest. One judgment records this sequence: the plaintiff thought the problem was resolved and told the government office it was not necessary to follow up; the office wrote saying it would pause; the flat above was then renovated, with floor tiles replaced and pipes converted to conspicuous pipes; and the claim was later dismissed for want of proof of source. That is a sequence, not a court's finding on causation.
• Cases received on or after 16 July 2026 run on a different procedure, and cases received before that date continue under the previous one. So the first thing to check is the date your case was received. (See the FEHD's FAQ about Water Seepage / Dripping ; the detail is below.)
• If the flat above will not open the door, you have no statutory power to get in. No Ordinance gives an owner, an occupier or an adjoining owner a right to enter a neighbour's flat; the "may enter" provisions in the statute book empower an authority or an authorised officer, not you. Section 24 of Cap. 7, headed "Landlord may enter and effect necessary repairs", is about a landlord entering premises he has let.

The first thing has nothing to do with law: what to keep, and when

In all six of the seepage judgments below, the paperwork the administrative routes produced is there in the court's findings of fact — and in two of the six it cut against the party who had gone and got it.

In all six, Joint Office or Food and Environmental Hygiene Department material appears in the court's findings — two convictions and departmental reports; a departmental letter that fixed the date of knowledge; a closure letter read by a tribunal; departmental dye tests and two letters pausing an investigation; a full investigation chronology; and one departmental water test with a refused stage III.

And in two of them the paperwork cut the other way. In one, every dye water test was negative, and the court observed:

In another it was blunter still. The plaintiffs held two convictions — the strongest paper the administrative route can produce — and were still refused summary judgment, because every report and both convictions predated the defendant's January 2022 renovation:

So if the conclusion you need is "it is still leaking now", your evidence has to be newer than the other side's last repair. But do not read it backwards. What that case refused was summary judgment, with unconditional leave to defend; it did not hold that evidence predating the repair is irrelevant. In the same decision the judge expressly agreed with the plaintiffs' counsel that "the defendant cannot escape liabilities even if there is water seepage from both the bathroom and the external wall". Earlier evidence can still bear on loss already suffered, on when the other side first knew, on the source before the repair, and on what that repair was actually addressing.

What the tests that actually worked look like, cheapest first

• The rainy-day / fine-day comparison, done as a measurement rather than an impression. In one case an expert set nine test points on the same damaged wall and read them with a conductivity meter on a rainy day (10 February) and a fine day (22 February). Here is how far apart they were: on 10 February, in the rain, every point averaged above 80%, and three of them read above 90%; on 22 February, in fine weather, the corresponding points averaged only about 34%. In the same case the other side's expert had run a water test of his own, and the tribunal, having reservations about it, gave it only limited weight — so a measurement is not an automatic win; it is weighed against the other side's measurement. And the photographic half of that is something you can do today: the same spot, the same angle, on a wet day and a dry day, dated.
• A controlled on-site water test, filmed. In another case there were three videos — one recorded on 1 October 2016 and two on 2 October 2016, at around 11:59 and around 12:33 — and the court found that the dripping "must have nothing to do with the weather at the material time".
• The paid tier, for comparison. A ponding test in the flat above, with electrical-conductivity readings of the ceiling below taken before and after, read together with microwave scan images at 30 mm, 70 mm and 110 mm depth — on the conductivity results the two sides agreed, the average moisture content of the ceiling rose from 20.6% to 22.4% (the judgment records an average). The two experts' microwave images disagreed with one another, and the agreed conductivity result is what the judge used to decide which set of images to prefer.

The management office's own records are evidence — and a court used them

In one case the court worked from the management office's incident log. The log showed that its staff had done no more than look:

and the same log preserved the upstairs owners' own written promise:

(this site's translation: "you promised that you would first complete the repairs to this part")

An office with no power to make anybody repair anything produced a document a court could use. So the value of telling the management office is not whether it will fix the leak. It is whether it will write something down and date it.

One sequence, told as a sequence

In the same set of judgments, one court's findings run in this order: in around June to July 2017 the plaintiff thought the problem was resolved and told the government office it was not necessary to follow up; by letters of 27 July 2017 the office wrote to both flats saying it would pause the investigation; in around August 2017 the defendant renovated the bathroom above, replacing the floor tiles and converting the pipes to conspicuous pipes. The claim was later dismissed for want of proof of source, with costs to the defendant.

The court dismissed the claim on the burden of proof; it did not hold that pausing the investigation caused the failure. But if you are currently weighing up whether to stop pushing, that is the passage to read before you decide.

And the report you pay for — how a court tells a good one from a bad one

One judgment is unusually direct. The rejected expert accepted in cross-examination that he had simply adopted the other side's methodology without analysing whether it could find the cause, because it was for the plaintiff to prove the cause, and that even if the proposed tests were insufficient he would not raise it, because his role in the proceedings was to defend the defendants. Of the expert who was preferred, the judge said he:

In one line: to a court, the mark of a good report is that it concedes something. A report with no limitations in it may do you less good than you expect.

You say "management office"; the Ordinance says "owners' corporation" — and one subsection joins them

The office you report to downstairs and the legal person on whom the Ordinance imposes the duty are not the same thing — and the Building Management Ordinance has a subsection that connects them.

The legal material speaks of the owners' corporation (法團), not the management office (管理處).

What the Ordinance says

Section 18(1) of the Building Management Ordinance (Cap. 344) sets out three duties:

And the bridge between "management office" and "owners' corporation" is in the next subsection. Section 18(2)(c) provides that a corporation may, in its discretion:

*The operative words are on behalf of the corporation. That is delegated authority — the manager is carrying out the corporation's duties or powers — not a separate set of statutory powers of its own. But delegated is not the same as powerless.* What any particular management company may actually decide and arrange turns on the deed of mutual covenant, the management agreement, the budget and what the corporation has in fact authorised. Section 18(2)(c) says the corporation may retain a manager to do these things for it; it does not say the manager has no operational authority.

So in practice: report, and report early — it writes things down, as the previous section shows, and it is usually the body that can attend, record, notify the flat above, co-ordinate the parties, arrange work on the common parts or escalate the matter. What it cannot do is settle who is liable to whom. Private liability is not a management company's to determine, and on the face of the Ordinance the section 18(1) duties remain the corporation's. The only way to know how much authority your management company actually has is to read the deed and the management agreement.

One more provision is routinely misread: section 34H — and what is most often dropped from it is who it reaches. Section 34H(1):

That is three classes of person, not one: the person who owns the part, the person with the right to its exclusive possession, and the person with the exclusive right to its use, occupation or enjoyment, as the case may be. So a tenant of the flat above who has exclusive possession of it may carry this duty himself. It remains a gap-filler: the obligation arises only where the deed of mutual covenant does not impose one, and section 34H(2) then provides:

So the deed comes first; section 34H fills the space the deed leaves.

A provision letting a non-official into somebody else's flat — and it is not yours

Section 40 of the same Ordinance: a member of a management committee, and any other person authorised by the committee, may — on reasonable notice to the owner or occupier — enter a flat at any reasonable time, for the purposes the subsection sets out: subsection (1)(a) — inspecting, repairing, maintaining or renewing (i) any common parts in the flat, or (ii) any other property in the flat whose condition does or may adversely affect the common parts or other owners; and subsection (1)(b) — abating any hazard or nuisance having that effect. Section 40(2) allows a magistrate to authorise breaking in, in the presence of a police officer.

Section 40(3):

In one line: that key is held by the management committee, not by you — and once used, the bill goes to the owner of the flat entered, but only for the two categories of work named in the subsection. Costs of work under subsection (1)(a)(i) — inspecting, repairing, maintaining or renewing the common parts that happen to lie inside the flat — are not made recoverable from that owner by section 40(3). Which category the work falls into is exactly what a reader in this position needs to ask.

How heavy is the corporation's own duty? One tribunal set it out

A 2023 Lands Tribunal case states the standard fully. In this site's translation: the corporation is not an insurer and is not liable merely because a common part has failed; and the duty to maintain should not turn on how much it costs, because what goes with that duty is the duty to raise the necessary funds.

In the same case the corporation advanced twelve reasons — among them that the defect could not be seen on inspection, that the committee could not act without a general meeting of owners, that funds were short, that the Buildings Department's letter had not blamed it, and that committee members could not read the applicant's English expert report. All twelve were rejected. The tribunal observed that the committee did not need to wait for a general meeting to authorise this, and the survey quotation was only $9,000:

The applicant in that case appeared in person with no legal representation; the corporation was represented by counsel instructed by a firm of solicitors.

One boundary. The above is the standard as that tribunal stated it in 2023. It is not the same as "Hong Kong law is". The extent of a corporation's duty was addressed by the Court of Final Appeal in Centre Chase Investment Ltd v The Incorporated Owners of Castle Peak Road International Industrial Building & Anor [2026] HKCFA 26. The judgment: FACV No 2 of 2026, [2026] HKCFA 26, on appeal from CACV No 96 of 2021; before Chief Justice Cheung, Ribeiro PJ, Fok PJ, Lam PJ and Gummow NPJ; heard 29 May 2026; judgment 18 June 2026.

What it decided. Leave was granted on one question only, set out at §73:

Lam PJ recorded at §20 that "Since leave to appeal to this Court was only granted on the waiver and acquiescence issue, I will not address the other issues in this judgment." The Court dismissed the appeal unanimously (§86). On the construction of section 18(1)(c), Lam PJ held at §51:

and at §54 that "the management committee should have full managerial discretion in choosing the best way to tackle a breach." The conclusion is at §57:

The same judgment draws the line back in, at §58:

Two sentences in it speak to what an owner can do. At §25 the Court records See Wah Fan v Incorporated Owners of Ki Tat Garden (Phase I) as having held "that an owner could bring an action in the Lands Tribunal to compel an owners’ corporation to take action in respect of breaches of a deed of mutual covenant and the Ordinance." And at §14, the Chief Justice adds the sentence that matters to anyone contemplating that route:

What the judgment does not decide. The appeal was about section 18(1)(c), the enforcement limb. The standard the 2023 Lands Tribunal case states is the section 18(1)(a) duty to maintain the common parts, and that was not within the appeal (§20, quoted above). Nothing said above about the duty to maintain has been changed because of this judgment, and this judgment does not overrule that 2023 tribunal decision. Nor is it a seepage case: it concerns decorative window frames installed for feng shui purposes on the external wall of an industrial building on Castle Peak Road (§§19, 70), which were later removed and re-instated under the Building (Minor Works) Regulation (Cap. 123N) with a certificate of compliance issued, so that no question of illegality remained by trial (§19). So it cannot simply be carried across to seepage.

The government door: who gets to press the button?

Not you. From "is there a nuisance" through "should a notice be served" to "should this go to court", every step in the Ordinance is the Authority's, and you are not a party to any of it.

First, the name. Reports of water seepage in buildings are handled by the Joint Office for Investigation of Water Seepage Complaints, set up by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department and the Buildings Department, and known in Cantonese as 滲水辦.

The Joint Office is not a statutory body

The Joint Office is an administrative arrangement; no Ordinance establishes it. So the Joint Office has no powers of its own. It exercises the Department's under the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance (Cap. 132) and the Building Authority's under the Buildings Ordinance (Cap. 123).

First, one question that comes before all of this: what kind of water is it?

Not every kind of water arriving from above or outside goes down the Joint Office route, and this question comes before everything below. The Joint Office's own material says that under normal circumstances, rainwater penetrating through roofs, flat roofs, balconies, external walls or windows, and leakage from water-supply pipes, do not carry public-health implications and are therefore not a nuisance the Joint Office can act on under Cap. 132. For those, it will advise you to approach the owners' corporation or the management company, or refer the matter to the Buildings Department; suspected wastage of water is referred to the Water Supplies Department. The Water Supplies Department for its part says it investigates only cases involving waste of water and will not intervene in a private dispute where there is no evidence of waste. The Buildings Department's side of this is dilapidation and defective drains, and it acts by statutory order.

So the Cap. 132 machinery described below is about water coming down from inside the flat above. If yours is coming through an external wall, a roof or a window frame, or from a burst supply pipe, the door to knock on may be a different one. Which kind of water is in your flat takes an inspection.

What "nuisance" means in the Ordinance — and what reading the whole section shows

Section 12(1) of Cap. 132 lists the nuisances that may be dealt with summarily — and it opens with a qualifier: the matters listed are nuisances "subject as hereinafter provided", which is what carries subsections 12(2) and 12(3), the savings for accumulations necessary to a business or manufacture and for the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance and the Air Pollution Control Ordinance. The first two limbs:

And reading the whole of section 12(1) shows something else: water is named, but not your water. Section 12(1)(g):

A dripping air-conditioner has its own limb. Water coming down from the flat above does not. Your case runs on the general words of section 12(1)(a) or (b).

Which is why the screen-out criteria look arbitrary and are not

The Joint Office screens a case out where it reads the moisture below 35%, where the water is coming from something the person reporting it owns, where the subject turns out not to be seepage in a building at all, or where that person withdraws. Three of those four have nothing to do with whether the complaint is right.

But the four are not the same kind of thing. The 35% reading is the Joint Office's own administrative threshold for beginning or continuing an investigation. It is not in Cap. 132, which prescribes no moisture standard at all. So 35% is a line the department draws about its own work, not a legislative line past which no nuisance exists.

The other three differ again: that the source is in the reporting person's own property, or that the subject is not seepage in a building, is a statement that this mechanism does not apply; a withdrawal stops the administrative process and is not an adjudication that the nuisance has ceased. A closure letter can therefore end the government's investigation without anybody having answered the civil question — which is exactly what the tribunal case described below shows, having read such a letter and still found the damaged external wall to be one of the sources.

Every step is the Authority's

Section 127(1): the Authority, if satisfied of the existence of a nuisance, may cause a nuisance notice to be served. The proviso to the same subsection:

Section 127(4): where a nuisance notice has been served, and either (a) the person served fails to comply with any of its requirements within the period specified in it, or (b) the nuisance has been abated since service but the Authority thinks it likely to recur on the same premises or vessel:

Who is "the Authority"? For section 127, the Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene, fixed by the Third Schedule. And that designation is itself movable: section 3(2) lets the Chief Executive in Council designate another public officer in substitution, and section 3(3) lets the Chief Executive in Council amend, add to or delete from the Third Schedule.

Section 127 has three more things you can use:

• Section 127(2): where the person whose act, default or sufferance caused the nuisance, and the owner and the occupier of the premises, cannot be found or ascertained, the Authority may abate the nuisance itself and recover the cost from any such person later found. An empty flat upstairs and an untraceable owner is not automatically the end of the road.
• Section 127(5): a nuisance order may be an abatement order, a prohibition order or a closing order, or a combination.
• Section 127(7)(b):

(Those opening words are not a formality. Paragraph (a) makes it an offence to fail without reasonable excuse to comply with a nuisance order, or knowingly to contravene one; paragraph (b)'s power to abate and recover runs alongside that offence rather than in place of it.)

And the right of appeal belongs to the other side

Section 127(8) applies Part VII (Appeals) of the Magistrates Ordinance (Cap. 227) to proceedings under the section — so the question "who may appeal" is answered by Cap. 227 itself: the appeal right is section 113.

Section 113(1) is about offences — a person aggrieved by a magistrate's conviction, order or determination "in respect of or in connection with any offence", who did not plead guilty, may appeal to a judge. A nuisance order is not a conviction; it is a summary order made on a complaint, so what governs is section 113(3):

The words that decide it are "either party thereto". Section 127(4) makes the complaint the Authority's; the parties to it are the Authority and the person against whom the order is made. The neighbour who complained downstairs is not a party to that complaint, and so is not one of the parties section 113(3) gives the appeal to.

From beginning to end, you are not a party.

The one private route is a closed loop

In theory you can prosecute yourself. Section 14(1) of the Magistrates Ordinance:

But the offences that belong to the nuisance machinery are those under Cap. 132 sections 127(3) and 127(7)(a) — and neither of them can exist until the Director has first served a notice or obtained an order.

Cap. 132 also contains section 126A(1), a free-standing offence: an owner or occupier who, without reasonable excuse, fails within the statutory period to admit a public officer authorised by the Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene commits an offence. It requires no nuisance notice and no nuisance order. What it does require is a demand for admission made under section 126(1). So "nothing can happen until the Director moves first" is right about the two section 127 offences, and cannot be carried across the whole of Cap. 132.

For the person downstairs the practical position is much the same: section 126A(1) is still built on a demand for admission made by a public officer, not by you, and you are still not a party to it. And in any event the same section of the Magistrates Ordinance provides that the Secretary for Justice may intervene at any stage and assume conduct of the proceedings, and is thereafter deemed to be a party in place of the private prosecutor.

What if the flat above will not open the door?

You have no right of entry. No owner, occupier, adjoining owner or neighbour has one under the Ordinances — and the Government does, but applied to the court for an entry warrant only 21 times in 2025.

No Ordinance gives an owner, an occupier or an adjoining owner a right to enter a neighbour's premises; the "may enter" provisions that do exist run in favour of an authority or an authorised officer.

Section 24 of Cap. 7, headed "Landlord may enter and effect necessary repairs", does let a private person enter premises. It lets a landlord into premises he has let himself, to find out whether repairs are needed or to carry them out; the section says nothing about water and is not a seepage provision. Not a neighbour going upstairs.

These two provisions are about different things. *Cap. 344 section 40 lets a non-official enter somebody else's flat — a management committee member, or the committee's authorised person, for the common parts or for property affecting them, and expressly to abate a hazard or nuisance, which includes water. Cap. 7 section 24 lets an owner into premises he owns and has let.* Neither of them is a power held by the flat below.

The three real doors all belong to somebody else: the public officer's (Cap. 132 s. 126), the Building Authority's (Cap. 123 s. 22 — and since 24 of 2012, except in an emergency, only with the permission of the owner, occupier or person appearing to have control, or on a magistrate's warrant under s. 22(1B)), and the management committee's (Cap. 344 s. 40, above).

How the public officer's door actually works — reading the whole of section 126

• Section 126(1) (which opens "Subject to the provisions of this section"): a public officer authorised in writing may enter premises at any time between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.; but where the premises are not used for business purposes or as a workplace, there is a proviso — admission:

(The posting limb matters: it is how the notice is given when nobody is there, and it is the event that starts the 14-day clock in section 126A(1)(d)(i)(B) below.)

• Section 126(2) — and it has two limbs joined by "and", both of which must be satisfied. Limb (a), any one of which will do: that admission has been refused or refusal is apprehended, or the premises are unoccupied or the vessel unattended, or the occupier or attendant is temporarily absent, or the case is one of urgency, or an application for admission would defeat the object of the entry, or "that it is reasonable for the purposes of this Ordinance in the circumstances of the case that entry be effected between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m."; and limb (b), which must be shown as well: "that there is reasonable ground for entry into the premises or vessel for any such purpose as aforesaid". Only then may the magistrate by warrant authorise entry, "if need be by force". Limb (b) is a second substantive condition, not a formality.
• And the subsection then continues, where most accounts stop:

(what follows is the same list of exceptions — unoccupied premises, temporary absence, urgency, notice defeating the object of the entry, and so on). In other words, even obtaining the warrant ordinarily requires a further notice. That is not delay; it is the design of the section.

• Sections 126(3) and (4): the officer may take such persons as may be necessary, must leave unoccupied premises as effectually secured against trespassers as he found them, and the warrant continues in force until the purpose for which the entry is necessary has been satisfied.

What changed on 17 August 2025

Section 126(5), added by Ordinance 13 of 2025, has three paragraphs. Where the Authority is the Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene: (a) the reference in subsection (1) to "between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m." is read as "between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m."; (b)

and (c) the reference in subsection (2) to "between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m." is read as "between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m." — which moves, in step, the out-of-hours ground in section 126(2)(a) set out above.

A new section 126A was added at the same time: it is an offence for an owner or occupier, without reasonable excuse, to fail to admit an officer authorised by the Director within 14 days. And the section says what those 14 days run from. Section 126A(1)(d)(i) splits the cases: (A) for premises or a vessel used for business purposes or as a workplace, from the date of the intended entry; (B) for premises or a vessel not so used — the domestic case — from the date on which the notice of the intended entry was given or posted under section 126(1).

But section 126A(2) belongs in the same breath: the Director may, on the specified person's own application, extend that period by written notice, and may extend it further. The 14 days is not a hard stop. The penalty is a level 2 fine; levels are fixed by section 113B(1) of the Criminal Procedure Ordinance (Cap. 221) and Schedule 8 (level 2 $5,000, level 4 $25,000, level 5 $50,000), and section 113B(3) lets the Chief Executive in Council amend those amounts by regulation — but the subsection states the purpose for which it may be done: to reflect his opinion of the effect of inflation on the value of the amounts since the Schedule came into operation, or since they were last amended. It is not an at-large power.

"If need be by force" — how often, in practice?

The Government's own five-year figures for warrants to effect entry applied for: 87 in 2021, 45 in 2022, 67 in 2023, 23 in 2024 and 21 in 2025 — while total cases handled ran 36,262 in 2021, 38,275 in 2022, 43,367 in 2023, 46,907 in 2024 and 44,548 in 2025 — rising to a 2024 peak and then falling back. And note 4 to the 2025-26 Estimates reply records that every one of those applications was granted.

Read those together: applications falling, and every application granted. Those two figures cannot say why applications fell, how long an application takes to prepare or to determine, how many cases were screened out or resolved before any application was made, or where a bottleneck lies — "all granted" tells you only that refusal is not an outcome that appears on this table.

And how does refusing entry get counted in a case?

The judgment records that the defendant allowed a Joint Office water test in around early May 2016, and that the test could not confirm the source; and then — the judgment's own word is "However" — when the office asked to carry out a "stage III" investigation, it was Mr Kwok, named as such in the judgment, who:

The court held the defendant liable for nuisance and negligence. The refusal of the stage III investigation was not, by itself, the operative fact: it was one of the things weighed, not a fact that decided the case.

That is a finding in one case. It is not a rule.

England and Wales has a door Hong Kong does not

The two statutes are drafted strikingly alike, and the difference is concentrated in one place: England and Wales gives the person suffering the nuisance a route of their own, and Hong Kong does not.

The similarity first. A statutory nuisance under section 79(1)(a) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 is "any premises in such a state as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance" — almost the same construction as Cap. 132 section 12(1)(a). And the structural-defect limb of section 80(2) of that Act tracks the proviso to Cap. 132 section 127(1) almost word for word.

Then three divergences, each with a practical consequence.

• A duty to investigate. Section 79(1) provides that where a complaint of a statutory nuisance is made to a local authority by a person living within its area, it is the authority's duty "to take such steps as are reasonably practicable to investigate the complaint". Cap. 132 has no counterpart — the Joint Office's investigation is an administrative undertaking, not a statutory duty.
• "Shall" against "may". Section 80(1): where satisfied that a statutory nuisance exists, or is likely to occur or recur, the local authority "shall serve a notice". Cap. 132 section 127(1): the Authority may cause a notice to be served.
• A private door. Section 82: a magistrates' court may act on "a complaint … made by any person on the ground that he is aggrieved by the existence of a statutory nuisance", and if satisfied that the nuisance exists the court "shall make an order". Sections 82(6) and (7) require the aggrieved person to give the defendant prior written notice — for nuisances other than noise, not less than twenty-one days.

On entry, the two systems agree on the mechanism — a public officer, a magistrate's or justice's warrant, "if need be by force" — but the notice Hong Kong requires before admission may be demanded as of right is "not less than 2 hours", and England and Wales's is twenty-four hours (Schedule 3, paragraph 2(2)). Add to that the changes of 17 August 2025: the Hong Kong window now runs to 10 p.m., "occupier" is read as "owner or occupier", and failing to admit an officer within 14 days is an offence.

In one line: on the notice required before entry, whether service of a nuisance notice is "shall" or "may", and whether the person suffering has a route of their own, Hong Kong is harder on the person complained about than England and Wales, and thinner for the person complaining.

Two UK Supreme Court judgments. In re McAleenon [2024] UKSC 31, at §58:

(That was a Northern Ireland judicial review of environmental regulators over a landfill site; the issue was whether a private nuisance claim and a complaint under that jurisdiction's equivalent of section 82 were suitable alternative remedies displacing judicial review. It is not Hong Kong authority and it is not about water seepage.)

And Manchester Ship Canal Co Ltd v United Utilities Water Ltd (No 2) [2024] UKSC 22, closing §136:

(That was an English case under the Water Industry Act 1991 between a canal company and a statutory undertaker. Again, not Hong Kong authority and not about seepage between flats.) It illustrates one point: going down the administrative route does not spend your civil rights.

What does "source not identified" mean? One caseload, several denominators, two directions

The same year, the same department and the same caseload yield 49.2%, 34.1% and 12.0%. All three are correct, but they are not three success rates of the same kind: 34.1% and 12.0% count sources identified, while 49.2% counts sources not identified — the first two are success rates and the third is a failure rate. Laid out on the one "source identified" numerator, the three success rates are 50.8%, 34.1% and 12.0%.

For 2025, from the Government's own reply: total cases handled 44,548 → screened out 28,921 (64.9%) → investigation completed 15,627 → source identified 5,326.

Three ratios come out of those four figures:

• On the "determinate outcomes" denominator: 5,326 identified ÷ (5,326 identified + 5,155 not identified) = 5,326 / 10,481 = 50.8%; on the same denominator, no source was found in 5,155 / 10,481 = 49.2%. Those two add to one hundred: they are the two ends of one line, not two success rates.
• On the "investigations completed" denominator (source identified): 5,326 / 15,627 = 34.1%.
• On the "cases handled" denominator (source identified): 5,326 / 44,548 = 12.0%.

And in 2024, of 46,907 cases handled, only 9,954 — 21.2% — reached a determinate outcome at all.

The Government itself has printed two success rates side by side

In a written reply of 21 November 2018 the Administration gave, for 2015, both success rates with both formulas written out: 36% for sources identified among cases investigated (4,679 ÷ 13,093), and 57% for sources identified among cases where investigation was completed (4,679 ÷ 8,173). Same year, same table, two official success rates.

The Audit Commission's 2016 report used a third formula, keeping cases where the seepage ceased or the report was withdrawn in the denominator. On that formula the rate began at 46% in 2007 and had slipped, year on year, to 36% by 2015.

In one line: on this subject there is no such thing as "the success rate" — only "the success rate on which formula".

The direction: from about three in ten to about one in two

On the one denominator both bodies share (not identified ÷ (identified + not identified)):

Note: the first row is a nine-year cumulative average from the Audit Commission; the rest are single calendar years from the FEHD.

And "source not identified" is not "there is no seepage"

One case records that on 9 September 2020 the government office replied to the complainant that the moisture found on the wall on inspection was below the 35% action standard for handling seepage, and that under established procedure it did not intend to take further action. But the same letter went on to say that the seepage might be connected with defective waterproofing on the building's external wall, and that she could contact the owners' corporation to arrange a detailed inspection and repair:

The tribunal then found that the damage to the external wall was indeed one of the sources, and said expressly that the law does not require the damage to the external wall to be the sole cause:

*In one line: you have to prove a source, not the source. And a closure letter is the consequence of a criterion* being triggered — moisture below 35% — not an adjudication on whether you are right.

A negative dye test cuts both ways

The same set of judgments supplies both directions. In one, a series of negative dye water tests was said to "may well be evidence against the seepage path as alleged by the claimant", and the claim was dismissed. In another, a single negative colour dye test was held, on the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors guide's own account that the test is weak at showing a colouring effect without surface cracks such as embedded waterproofing membrane defects, to be:

Both are right. The variable is how many tests were done and what else was in evidence. Neither is the rule.

The procedure changed on 16 July 2026 — and you may not be on the new one

First find out the date your case was received, because that date decides which procedure you are on.

What the new procedure does (from the Government's release of 16 July 2026): where the office has reason to think an upper-floor unit is the source, it now writes to that owner — a Notification Letter — within roughly 14 working days of the report, and allows 28 calendar days for the inspection and the repairs. The Government puts the gain at about 57 working days, measured against the old sequence, in which a nuisance notice went out only once every stage of investigation had finished. Infrared thermography moves up into Stage I and is run alongside electronic moisture meters, and Stages II and III now run together rather than one after the other. Where the upper-floor owner does not comply, the office will pursue that owner for what the examinations cost — a sum the Government puts at no less than $17,000.

And the dividing line is stated plainly: a seepage case that reached the office on or after 16 July 2026 runs on the new procedure; one that reached it earlier stays on the old one, and is followed up that way to the end.

⚠ The "roughly 14 working days" is an expectation, not an undertaking. The FEHD's FAQ about Water Seepage / Dripping puts it this way: for simple and straightforward cases, and where the owners or occupants concerned co-operate, the Joint Office anticipates that a Notification Letter can go to the owner in about 14 working days of the report. The same FAQ states two further things: the new procedure has been implemented from 16 July 2026 as a pilot scheme, and every seepage case the office receives from that date is handled under it; and the concurrent Stage II and Stage III investigation has been extended across the whole territory. So the 14 working days are not something that will necessarily happen in your case, and are not an undertaking given to you by anyone.

Two tracks are running at once.

How much is sitting on the old track? One floor you can calculate

The office's published performance measure is a cohort measure: it reports that 31,940 of the reports it took in during 2025 — 69.5% of them — reached the end of investigation, and the person who reported it was told the outcome, inside 90 working days.

The Department's figure for cases received in 2025 is 45,957. From which: 45,957 − 31,940 = at least 14,017 cases from the 2025 cohort alone ran past 90 working days.

That is a floor on the population, not a count of it. The published figures do not say how many of them were still open on 16 July 2026.

How long did the old system take?

The Audit Commission reported in 2016 that of 28,332 cases completed between April 2015 and March 2016, 9,710 (34%) exceeded the 133-day reference timeframe, and 643 (2%) took 2.2 to 7.5 years.

Those numbers cannot be drawn as a line against the 90-working-day figure above. The 90-working-day measure counts cases received in a year; the 133-day measure counts cases completed in a period; and 133 days is not 90 working days.

And something is on its way

On 27 October 2025 the Ombudsman announced that it would investigate, in full, how the Joint Office handles water seepage cases, and said the inquiry would run as a series, looking at how the office investigates, how effective that is, and how it supervises its consultants; the period for written representations closed on 27 November 2025.

As at 5 September 2026 no report had appeared.

Mediation

The new procedure expressly encourages resolution through co-ordination and mediation.

For the scheme under which property-management agents take part in handling seepage in residential buildings, the Department publishes that, in participating estates over the preceding three years, around 70% of water-seepage cases were successfully resolved by the management companies by means of co-ordination. Its population is participating estates, not Hong Kong; it counts cases resolved by a management company's co-ordination, not settlements reached in mediation; and it is a round figure published without a numerator and denominator beside it.

What does it cost? The Government has published a price list

On 15 July 2026, the day before the new procedure took effect, the Joint Office published a table of indicative costs. With it, the quotation in your hand has something to be read against for the first time.

Investigation and testing items, listed by price with the item number each carries on the Government's table:

item 12 on-site test paper $100–200; item 3 flow meter test for water supply pipes and item 7 colour water test at drainage outlets $500–1,000; item 1 moisture content monitoring $1,000–1,500; item 4 reversible pressure test $1,200–2,000; item 5 static pressure test $1,200–2,500; item 2 infrared thermography (ceiling) $1,500–2,500; item 8 ponding test for a floor slab $1,500–2,800; item 9 spray test for a wall $1,500–2,500; item 6 hydrostatic water pressure test $1,500–3,000; item 10 microwave tomography $3,000–7,000; item 11 radar scanning survey $5,000–8,000 (the last two per set, a set being at most 10 square metres).

Package examples: testing waterproofing layers with advanced technologies $5,500–11,000; a conventional bathroom waterproofing test $5,000–8,800; a water-supply-pipe leakage test $3,000–5,500.

Repair examples: one bathroom, new waterproofing layer to floor and walls with re-tiling and a post-completion waterproofing test $30,000–67,000; the same plus replacing the supply and drainage pipes $39,000–80,000; replacing about 3 metres of exposed supply pipe $3,000–5,000; replacing drainage pipes $6,000–9,000.

The basis of the table: the costs are calculated on the basis of a bathroom or kitchen of approximately 3 to 4 square metres; they do not cover the preparation of investigation reports; and they were compiled from reference costs supplied by authorized persons, registered structural engineers, registered inspectors and registered minor works contractors invited by the office in the fourth quarter of 2025, together with Buildings Department consultants' contract prices. The office says in terms that they should not be construed as recommended charges.

(For historical contrast, with its year: in 2018 the Government put the cost of its own conventional tests at about $3,500 a case, and about $9,000 where the newer testing technologies were used — on the worked example it chose, a normal home with one kitchen and one lavatory. That is what the office's own testing cost then, not a market price.)

If I pay for a test and a report, do I get it back when I win?

There is a mechanism here that most people get wrong: that money is not necessarily lost — it may move from "damages" into "costs", and the two run on entirely different rules.

In a 2023 District Court judgment the plaintiff claimed the survey fees for her pre-action report as damages. The judge noted that the report had been issued around two months before the proceedings began and had been provided to the defendants as an enclosure to the pre-action letter dated 18 June 2019, and therefore:

The judgment's own words are "inclined to think", so it is not a firm rule. The judge cited Yim Wai Ling and Anor v Yuen Chik Wah and Anor, DCCJ 663 of 2013 (12 August 2016), §95.

Why does the move matter? Damages follow liability; costs are discretionary. Across the judgments, costs took these forms:

• To the winner (1): in the Lands Tribunal case, a costs order nisi requiring the respondent to pay the applicant all her costs on the District Court scale, with the amount summarily assessed by the judge without a hearing.
• To the winner (2): in a District Court case where liability had been conceded, the plaintiffs were awarded their costs of the assessment of damages, with a certificate for counsel, to be taxed if not agreed.
• Against the loser: in another District Court case the plaintiff failed, and costs followed the event by an order nisi in the defendant's favour, with a certificate for counsel, to be taxed if not agreed.
• Undecided: where summary judgment was refused, costs were ordered to be in the cause, with a certificate for counsel — that is, left to whoever ultimately wins.

So the accurate statement is not "only if you win, and then only on taxation". Only if you win is right. Taxation is not the only route: the first of those four was assessed by the judge summarily, with no hearing at all.

And the cheapest forum runs on a different rule, and the Ordinance answers it. Section 24 of the Small Claims Tribunal Ordinance (Cap. 338) is headed "Costs", and subsection (1) reads:

Read the opening words together with the limbs. The grant is that the tribunal may award to a party costs and expenses; the two paragraphs that follow are introduced by "which may include", and both of them close on in attending the hearing. "May include" is illustrative, not exhaustive — the subsection does not say "shall be limited to". So the time off work and the witness's outlay are the statutory examples of what an award may cover, not a door closed by name on the survey or inspection fee you paid before anything began. Paragraph 1's proviso, limb (f), quoted above, keeps out a claim for pre-action costs alone where no proceedings have been commenced in that tribunal; it does not decide whether a particular survey disbursement may be awarded as costs, or recovered as damages, inside a claim that has been commenced.

The three forums are not drafted the same way on this point: the "damages become costs" mechanism described above works in the District Court and in the Lands Tribunal; *in the Small Claims Tribunal — the cheapest of the three — section 24 is a discretionary power: the tribunal may award costs and expenses, and what it lists is attendance expenditure by way of example. Whether your surveyor's fee comes back there is for the adjudicator on the facts of your own claim.* Section 24(2) requires the tribunal, when it awards costs, to direct the amount payable by each paying party, and section 24(3) makes an award of costs enforceable in the same way as any other award of the tribunal.

And what does non-compliance cost the flat above?

Two convictions, two $3,000 fines. In the same case, the defendant was convicted and fined $3,000 on 29 September 2021 for failing to comply with a nuisance notice dated 15 January 2021, and convicted and fined $3,000 again on 20 April 2022 for failing to comply with the nuisance order.

The maxima in the Ordinance are set out, offence by offence, in the Ninth Schedule to Cap. 132 — the penalties table, which gives a level and a daily penalty for each section: for an offence under section 127(3)(a) or (b), a level 4 fine plus a daily fine of $450; for an offence under section 127(7)(a), a level 5 fine plus a daily fine of $600 (the same Schedule sets a level 2 fine for section 126A(1)). The levels themselves are converted by Schedule 8 to Cap. 221: level 4 is $25,000 and level 5 is $50,000, and the Chief Executive in Council may amend those amounts by regulation under section 113B(3) — but only to reflect his opinion of the effect of inflation on their value.

It can punish. It will not pay you a cent. And a conviction is only prima facie evidence in the civil case, not conclusive, and the defendant remains entitled by statute to prove the contrary. The criminal route and the civil route are two different roads: see Real Cases: How Hong Kong Courts Decided Water Leakage Disputes .

Which forum? And is there legal aid?

The awards and the whole Small Claims procedure are covered in the sibling guides.

Before the amount: do you want money, or do you want it to stop?

Paragraph 1 of the Schedule, quoted below, opens on two words — monetary claim. Its opening words are "Any monetary claim founded in contract, quasi-contract or tort", and the $75,000 is the ceiling attached to that kind of claim. A claim to make the other side repair, or for an order that the seepage stop, is not a monetary claim; it does not land in that forum merely because your estimate is under $75,000, and the figure does not turn the Small Claims Tribunal into a place that can grant an injunction.

So read what follows with the two kinds of demand kept apart:

• Money only (loss already suffered) — all of these take it, and differ on amount and procedure: the Small Claims Tribunal ($75,000 or less) and the District Court ($3,000,000 or less).
• Make it stop, make it repaired — that depends on a forum having the corresponding power within the subject matter of your case. Inside building management, that is the Lands Tribunal: section 10(1) of Cap. 17, quoted below, lets the Tribunal follow the practice and procedure of the Court of First Instance in the exercise of its civil jurisdiction, and for that purpose gives it the same jurisdiction, powers and duties as the Court of First Instance. As for the Court of First Instance itself — the two money lines above are the Small Claims Tribunal's and the District Court's, and neither of them is the Court of First Instance's; the Court of First Instance is not bound by either line.

The Small Claims Tribunal — paragraph 1 of the Schedule to the Small Claims Tribunal Ordinance (Cap. 338):

The proviso opens:

and it then lists limbs (a) to (f), of which (f) is:

So if what you want to bring is a claim for pre-action expenditure on its own — the survey or inspection fee you paid, where no proceedings have been commenced in that tribunal — paragraph 1's proviso, limb (f), puts it outside the tribunal's jurisdiction by name. Read that together with the costs section below.

And that line can be moved. Section 6 of the same Ordinance:

The District Court — section 32(1) of the District Court Ordinance (Cap. 336):

Also movable: section 73A provides that the amounts mentioned in sections 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 49, 52, 53A(5), 68B and 69B may be amended by resolution of the Legislative Council; the last change was made by L.N. 131 of 2018.

Legal aid: closed at both ends, and closed expressly

Part 1, paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Legal Aid Ordinance (Cap. 91) lists civil proceedings in the Court of Final Appeal, the Court of Appeal, the Court of First Instance and the District Court. But Part 2, paragraph 9 of the same Schedule expressly excepts:

And on the Lands Tribunal side, Part 1, paragraph 4 admits only:

A building-management application against an owners' corporation is not brought under Part II of Cap. 7. In other words: the cheapest forum is excepted by name, and the route against the corporation is, on the face of the Schedule, outside it too. The District Court in the middle is, in principle, within.

The Lands Tribunal has an inspection power — with a limit that must be stated with it

Section 10(1) of the Lands Tribunal Ordinance (Cap. 17) lets the Tribunal follow the practice and procedure of the Court of First Instance in the exercise of its civil jurisdiction, and for that purpose gives it the same jurisdiction, powers and duties as the Court of First Instance in respect of that practice and procedure; section 10(1A) gives it the same jurisdiction, powers and duties in respect of punishing contempt. Section 10(2) then opens with the words "Without prejudice to the generality of the powers vested in it under subsection (1)" — so the list in subsection (2) is illustrative, not exhaustive.

Against that background, section 10(2)(c) provides that the Tribunal may:

Those words confer a power on the Tribunal. They are not an order against a stranger.

Where the Tribunal's building-management jurisdiction comes from: Section 45(1) of the Building Management Ordinance (Cap. 344) gives the Tribunal jurisdiction to hear and determine any proceedings specified in Schedule 10; Schedule 10 lists nine classes, of which the first is proceedings relating to the interpretation and enforcement of the provisions of that Ordinance, the second proceedings on the interpretation and enforcement of a deed of mutual covenant, and the fifth proceedings on questions of law concerning the powers and duties of a corporation, a management committee, or a manager. That is where a building-management claim against an owners' corporation finds its door.

And the same section carries a standing rule, directly on the question of who may start such a case. Section 45(2):

Section 45(4) lists the persons to whom the section applies — an owner; the Authority; a person referred to in section 3(1)(a) or (b); a management committee; a corporation; a manager; an owners' committee within the meaning of Part VIA; a registered mortgagee; an administrator; and, with the Tribunal's leave, the tenants' representative or any other person specified in a registered instrument including a deed of mutual covenant. The last two limbs of that list have to be read as drafted:

"The tenants’ representative" is a statutory role, not a synonym for any tenant. So the accurate statement is this: an owner is expressly listed; a tenant does not get in simply by asking the Tribunal for leave. He must first fall within a listed category — the tenants’ representative, say, or a person specified in an instrument registered in the Land Registry including a deed of mutual covenant — and those two categories then also require leave. Section 45(2) says no person other than a person to whom the section applies is competent to commence the proceedings at all. Leave is necessary for those limbs; it is not what puts you on the list.

And seven doors that close with your subject named on them

A government building-management support page lists twelve services. Seven of them state that they do not accept applications concerning water seepage — the free legal advice service, the panel of advisors on building-management disputes, the free mediation scheme, the building-management dispute-resolution service, the owners' corporations advisory services scheme, the pre-meeting advisory service, and the outreach legal advice service.

(What the six judgments awarded, and how those awards sit against the $75,000 line, are in Real Cases: How Hong Kong Courts Decided Water Leakage Disputes ; the Small Claims procedure from filing to enforcement is in the Small Claims Tribunal playbook .)

What is the claim? And can you still bring it years later?

In one case, four causes of action were treated as one question because both counsel agreed to treat them that way — and limitation is where the provisions do draw an express distinction between them.

How four causes of action became one question, in one case

In one case the plaintiff pleaded breach of a clause of the deed of mutual covenant, breach of section 34H of the Building Management Ordinance, negligence and nuisance. Both counsel agreed that it was not necessary to discuss those causes of action in detail:

and if the plaintiff could not, there would be no liability.

What collapsed the four causes into one question was the shared position of counsel in that case, not a general ruling of Hong Kong law; apart from that paragraph, the judgment does not discuss the four causes separately. So the accurate statement is this: in that case the source was the whole fight; in the general case the source is the first gate all four routes share, which is not the same as being the whole of any of them. Nuisance asks, beyond the source, who created, adopted or continued the nuisance, and whether that person knew of it and had a reasonable opportunity to abate it (knowledge is the next subsection here). Negligence asks about duty, breach, causation and loss. The deed of mutual covenant asks which covenant, who may sue whom, and what remedy is available. Section 34H asks whether the person falls within the three classes the section names, and whether the deed left the gap the section fills.

The burden, and "knowledge"

The burden is on you, and no presumption helps you:

*What you must prove is a source, not the source* — as the tribunal quoted above put it, the law does not require the damage to the external wall to be the sole cause.

And what fixes liability on the flat above is knowledge. In a 1998 Court of Appeal case (張秀玲及吳炳漢 對 鄭禮莊, CACV 268 of 1998, §26) the Court set out a framework in Chinese. Its third limb is that where an occupier did not cause the leak but comes to know that it originates in his unit, he must remedy it without unreasonable delay:

and "knowing" covers two situations — actually knowing, or what he could have known with normal and reasonable care:

and the next sentence in the same passage says that even where the occupier does not actually know of the leak because he is not at the place, he cannot use that to shed responsibility:

So being away and not knowing is not an answer. And the framework speaks throughout of the 戶主, the occupier — the person using the place, who does not have to be the owner:

How is the date of knowledge fixed? In the same 2023 judgment, the defendants' actual knowledge was fixed by the Joint Office's letter of 4 June 2018 identifying the defective waterproofing layer under the bathtub; a visual-only inspection by the management office was no reasonable basis for concluding they had no duty to repair; and replacing the bathtub drainage pipe did not discharge that duty, because water in the bathtub can pass through the defective waterproofing layer and move downwards before it ever reaches the drainage pipe.

Limitation: what the Ordinance gives, and what it does not

What it gives. Section 4(1)(a) of the Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347) provides that:

shall not be brought after the expiration of 6 years from the date on which the cause of action accrued. Section 4(3) gives 12 years for an action upon a specialty.

Each of those carries a proviso. The proviso to section 4(1)(d):

and the proviso to section 4(3) itself:

So neither six years nor twelve is the only clock in the Ordinance.

Section 4(7):

*In other words: section 4 does not apply of its own force to a claim for specific performance, an injunction or other equitable relief — but the same sentence leaves a door open, because the court may apply the section's provisions by analogy, in the way the corresponding English enactment is applied in the English courts. So the correct statement is this: the six years bites directly on the money claim; on an injunction section 4 is not automatic, but that is not the same as there being no clock — the subsection expressly contemplates the court applying the same periods by analogy.*

And the choice of cause of action matters here and only here. Sections 31 and 32 — the late-knowledge extension (6 years, or 3 years from the date of knowledge, whichever expires later) and the 15-year overriding time limit — apply to "any action for damages for negligence", and neither mentions nuisance. So the four causes are interchangeable on liability and are not interchangeable on time.

How time runs on a leak that has not stopped is a common-law question — continuing nuisance; nothing in the Limitation Ordinance fixes when time starts to run on a continuing nuisance.

What about damage you find only after you bought the flat?

For example, a buyer wanting to pursue damage from upstairs that occurred in the previous owner's time, or someone who found water stains on the ceiling only after completion.

What the Ordinance says: the two periods in section 4 are 6 years (simple contract or tort) and 12 years (a specialty), each attached to a different kind of action; and neither of them is a rule about when time starts on a leak that has not stopped.

You may not be the one downstairs: middle floors, tenants, and a solicitor's letter

Not everyone is the person underneath.

The middle flat: victim and defendant at the same time

A common position: water coming down into the flat from above, and at the same time a complaint from the flat below that water is coming down from it. Tradesmen may not be available at once, and the flat below may threaten a solicitor's letter. The real question is often the extent of the work: how far the repair has to go.

First half: the knowledge framework above runs on the occupier of the flat the water comes from, and "knowing" includes what he could have known with normal and reasonable care. So "I have not found my own source yet" is not, by itself, an answer to the flat below.

The other half — how much repair counts as enough — is the reinstatement-scope question: depreciated value or replacement, a patch or the whole wall, how materials are apportioned. That turns on a professional assessment of the individual case. What the six judgments actually allowed and disallowed by head of loss is in the case-patterns guide.

The tenant: can the flat below join me?

For example, a tenant partway through a fixed term may be pushed to move out because the landlord's own works are leaking into the flat below, and told the flat below will sue the tenant as well as the landlord.

Note: the Court of Appeal framework quoted above speaks of the occupier, and says in terms that the occupier is the person using the place and does not have to be the owner. Everything else — the fixed term, notice, and how repairing obligations are split under a tenancy — belongs to the tenancy guides: residential tenancy agreements and ending a tenancy .

And the solicitor's letter from downstairs

Some people say you can ignore a solicitor's letter from downstairs, on the basis that the other side would still need a certificate from the department or a surveyor before it could win.

The first half of that is right: the burden is on the party bringing the claim, there is no legal presumption that seepage came from above, and res ipsa loquitur does not apply.

But it does not follow that a letter can be treated as nothing. The 2023 judgment described above is the demonstration: a pre-action letter dated 18 June 2019 enclosing a report; proceedings issued in July 2019; and repairs begun by the defendants only after the writ. One thing a letter before action does is fix the date from which the other side knew — and knowledge is exactly the threshold the section above sets out.

How solicitors' letters are generally handled is in What to do when you receive a solicitor's letter .