A fashion director has denied ‘deceiving’ the barrister who bought her £5.5million home in Notting Hill, after he claimed it was secretly ‘plagued by mice and flooding’.
Paula Reed, 64, is being sued by top barrister Tom Grayson Ford and his wife Jessica, after they claimed the trendy London terraced home was full of faults which they were not warned about before they bought it.
The former Harvey Nichols fashion director says she knew nothing of the alleged ‘puddles’ in the basement, or the mouse infestation at the six-storey home in Westbourne Grove.
But Mr Grayson Ford and his wife are suing for the right to hand back the house or claim over £1million in damages, arguing that Ms Reed deliberately or ‘recklessly’ failed to reveal issues with the property, which had been revamped decades earlier by her ex-husband, the top architect Alfred Munkenbeck.
The couple said that soon after they moved in, the basement flooded after heavy rain, they were plagued by ‘mice – alive and dead’, as well as ‘numerous droppings’ and a leaky kitchen roof.
The couple said they were promised during the sale that the seven-bedroom house on Westbourne Grove, close to the trendy Portobello Market, was ‘well-renovated’ and in ‘move-in’ condition.
But they argued the problems they have since encountered must have already existed – and Ms Reed must have already known about them.
Ms Reed denied any knowledge of the issues, saying they could have caused the kitchen leak themselves by ripping out a bespoke green roof of ‘ferns and ivy’ which had covered that part of the house.
The barrister and his wife, who have two young children, said that a month after buying the house and moving in, they ‘returned from a week away over New Year to discover, on January 5, 2025, flooding…following heavy rain, with such flooding having plainly occurred previously’.
They claim the flooding continued to happen, and pointed to a leaky kitchen and mouse infestation which was proven by ‘a significant number of rodent traps – both spring and poison – left in the property, together with numerous droppings in and around the kitchen and ground floor, and the presence of mice – alive and dead – together with gaps and crevices allowing entry.’
They accuse Ms Reed of ‘a number of separate misrepresentations’ which shows her ‘willingness and intention’ to ‘conceal the truth and withhold matters that might negatively affect her sale of the property’.
They add that they never would have bought the property in the first place had they known about its faults.
In her response, Ms Reed insisted that her statements to the couple in their ‘pre-contractual enquiries’ were true.
Her barrister Faisel Sadiq said at London’s High Court that while Ms Reed had been living in the house, ‘there was no flooding at the property, and it did not suffer from any infestation of vermin.’
After 2020, the house had been rented out and she had received no complains or reports of flooding or vermin from the tenants, he said.
He added that the basement room which the couple say is the epicentre of the ‘flooding’ is a ‘pump room’ for a former swimming pool in the garden – now converted to a pond – which was ‘not tanked and was, when constructed, not intended for habitation’.
He said that the room ‘was always damp, with the level of damp increasing significantly following rainfall,’ adding that ‘on a few occasions, following very heavy rainfall, a few small patches of water could be found on the floor.’
He added that Ms Reed had used it as a storeroom and would deal with the damp atmosphere by placing ‘damp absorbers’ on the floor.
Denying any attempt at concealing the damp by Ms Reed, he said: ‘The damp absorbers were present in the pump room when Mr Grayson Ford viewed the property on September 23, 2024.
‘The damp absorbers were also present in the pump room when his building surveyor surveyed the property on October 18, 2023.’
Turning to the alleged leak in the kitchen roof which the couple argued needs replacing, the barrister said: ‘On the roof of the extension was soil, ferns and ivy that Ms Reed had placed there in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
‘The roof of the extension was impermeable and was designed by Alfred Munkenbeck with a view to Ms Reed being able to have soil and vegetation laid on top of it.
‘Ms Reed notes that in recent photographs of the property sent to her by the claimants, the soil and vegetation appeared to have been entirely removed from the roof.
‘The defendant has no knowledge of the steps the claimants took to ensure that no damage was done to the roof when the soil and vegetation were removed.’
The case was heard in court last week for a pre-trial hearing before High Court judge Master Katherine McQuail, who directed that an expert building surveyor should be recruited to investigate the house and give evidence as to ‘what state the property was in on the date of completion and was there evidence of flooding’.
Unless it settles out of court, the case will return for trial at a later date.
Ms Reed, a well-known fashion writer and consultant who has appeared on TV shows Project Catwalk and 10 Years Younger, sold the house in Westbourne Grove in December 2024.
She has since retreated to Morwenstow in Cornwall to renovate an old vicarage listed at £1.2million, which she wrote about in a column for Good Housekeeping magazine.
Numerous famous faces have called the west London area home over the years, including Damon Albarn, Stella McCartney, Robbie Williams, Sir Elton John, David Cameron, Lindsay Lohan and Harry Styles.
Former Grazia fashion editor and Harvey Nichols fashion boss Ms Reed, 64, sold the property in December 2024, having already begun a new life in the country after moving to a £1.2m listed vicarage in, Morwenstow, Cornwall.
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