A couple have been awarded £220,000 in compensation after their home was demolished when a water main burst in their garden.

David O’Connor and Susan Docherty from Glasgow had been complaining to Scottish Water for five years about the problems the water main has been causing to the ground near their home before a crater appeared.

Scottish Water claimed that the leak didn’t contribute to the appearance of the sinkhole and that they had done everything in their power. They argued, instead, that there had been heavy rainfall in the area prior to the sinkhole appearing, and suggested the more likely cause of the collapse was the poor quality of the land in the area.

An investigation by Scottish Water, Glasgow City Council and other bodies found that a manhole near the house had collapsed and a substantial void had formed under the property.

The couple took legal action against Scottish Water for compensation at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. During the three-day hearing the court was told that the couple thought that damage caused by the bursting of a water main near their home in 2008, creating two sinkholes, had led to the collapse five years later.

Judge Lady Wolffe said: “They advanced alternative explanations for the 2013 collapse, including heavy rainfall in the month or so preceding “.

She added that Scottish Water had also blamed the “poor quality generally of the land” in the area.

But in her judgement, published on Friday, Lady Wolffe sided with the couple.

She wrote: “The two incidents occurred in very close proximity to each other. The 2008 water main burst caused settlement in precisely the same location that the initial settlement in November 2013 occurred.

“The obvious explanation for this is that the two incidents were related.”

The judge also suggested that it would have been a “remarkable coincidence” for the sinkhole in 2013 to have appeared in exactly the same location as the incident in 2008.