The Court looked again at the approach to evaluating the scope of a valuer’s duty and recoverable losses resulting from a negligent valuation. The dispute in Hope Capital Limited v Alexander Reece Thomson LLP [2023] was in respect of a negligent valuation by the Defendant (the Valuer) of a 15th century Grade II listed property in Surrey. The valuation was a secured lending valuation in respect of a short term bridging loan for around £2.215 million, with a low loan to value (LTV) ratio. In terms of assessing loss, the Court found that: 1) the factual reason that the value of security was not realised within 180 days of the default was due to the conduct of the Borrower (ie the dispute with the National Trust); 2) had it not been for the Borrower’s conduct and the subsequent effects of Covid-19 on the market, the Claimant would not have suffered any loss of capital advanced; and 3) by analogy with the case of Charles B Lawrence, the loss caused by the breach of the Valuer’s duty was therefore nil. This will be good news for valuers and their professional indemnity insurers as it will almost always be arguable that any change in value between the valuation date and the realisation date is attributable to changes in market conditions and/or other external factors for which the valuer is not responsible. Further, the Hope Capital decision makes it clear that notwithstanding that a valuation was critical to a decision to lend, that does not necessarily mean that the valuer is liable for all of the financial consequences of that transaction, even in a “no transaction” case.