Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Eiger v Ridge (English TCC): IMS owes independent professional judgement; RICS conflict breaches actionable; quantum limited to BCIS-benchmarked construction cost differential under Manchester Building Society scope-of-duty principles

Published on: 10 April 2026

Published by a LexisNexis Construction expert

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Article summary

Eiger Funding (PCC) Ltd v Ridge and Partners LLP [2026] EWHC 609 (TCC) (16 March 2026)

What are the practical implications of the case?

This ruling is a seminal, defining judgment that reshapes the scope and limits of monitoring surveyor exposure along three closely connected strands.

First, the character of the IMS obligation. The most significant takeaway is that a monitoring surveyor must exercise independent professional judgement, not act as a passive conduit. Ridge was held in breach for repeating the developer client’s cost numbers in a report to Eager as “agreed and robust” without verifying them. The baseline is now fixed: objective benchmarking against an industry yardstick, such as BCIS, is compulsory. If a developer’s figures sit in the bottom quartile of market pricing, the surveyor must give a clear warning to the lender about the material risk of cost overrun. An IMS that simply transmits developer statements falls short of the reasonably competent professional standard.
Second, conflicts of interest. This is the first English authority to hold that an IMS’s failure to manage a conflict under RICS guidance amounts to a distinct head of professional negligence. Crucially, the court dismissed any suggestion that RICS compliance on conflicts is...

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