From Claim to Forever Home…

David Callin, Director of the Expert Witness Team at Cowan Architects, was recently asked by a leading law firm to give a presentation to their litigation team (handling personal injury and clinical negligence) and their court of protection team at the same time. It was obviously quite a wide audience but the reasoning was “our litigation teams secure their claimants an award but rarely see how that is used for accommodation, whilst our court of protection teams get handed the money to look after but rarely see the process of how the money is secured!”. They wanted David to shed some light on both sides in relation to the claimant’s home.

As an Expert Witness working on Claimant’s cases and a practicing architect working with Claimants after their case has concluded, he was well positioned to talk to both teams about the process a claimant goes through to achieve their forever home. It then dawned on me that the challenge was not going to be explaining the process but rather keeping each half of the presentation interesting for the team that already knew it!

The presentation turned into a 45-minute case study that went through the process of the Expert Witness assessment and report outlining the considerations of the case and the evidence that informed opinion, through to the Property Search in the Claimant’s preferred location to find potential properties, the Suitability Report on the Claimant’s preferred property and eventually the design and construction of the Claimant’s forever home.