Michael: a pump is not a bad idea, there certainly doesn’t seem to be much else we can do

Vince: we had the same situation with a previous house purchase, and when we said to the solicitors that the vendor had deliberately misled us, the response was “what are you going to do about it?”. I doubt we have a leg to stand on as we did have a damp survey which said the place could flood.

I should add that its flooded again since I wrote this post … so that night, I cooked in my wellies.