I was told that someone had threatened to sue BT over the large slippage on delivery dates. They had been originally informed that fibre would be in our area by last august and had based their business in the area based on that information. the slippage to dec 2014 (if we are lucky) had negatively impacted his business and he was seeking compensation from BT for the misinformation they had provided.
I can't see a cause of action to sue.
An end user cannot contract directly with Openreach for FTTx - they would need to go through a communications provider such as BT Retail. However, it's Openreach that disseminate the best effort roll out dates. There means there's no possibility of an end user accepting an offer of service BT made generally or to a particular group of people, which would create a unilateral contract. As there is no contract, the business cannot sue for breach of contract.
The first requirement to show BT was negligent would be to establish it owed this business a duty of care to publish reliable information. Openreach would not necessarily have had any way of knowing this business could be a victim when they published the information - they might not even have known this business existed. If Openreach could not foresee this specific business would be a victim, they almost certainly owe it no duty of care in respect of the date, also any loss caused is likely to be too remote from any breach of duty of care to be recoverable.
It is debatable whether it is a fair, just and reasonable to impose a duty of care considering that the public interest is arguably better served by publication of 'best estimate' rollout data rather than Openreach publishing no information at all about their plans.
Even if a duty of care is owed and the company demonstrates that a breach of this duty caused it losses that BT could reasonably foresee, there does not appear to be any way for the company to recover for financial losses caused to the business via a negligence claim. The general position is that you cannot recover for pure economic loss in matters of tort such as negligence - you can only recover for economic loss that was a consequence of physical damage.
In certain circumstances, recovery for loss that is purely economic is possible, but this can only happen when the body making the statement assumed responsibility towards a specific body in the advice it gave and it was reasonable for that body to rely on the advice. I cannot see how BT assumed responsibility for the actions this company took by publishing a proposed ready for service date, so any losses appear to be irrecoverable pure economic loss.
I think any suggestion that a business is taking legal action that is likely to lead to a victory against BT is pure bluster.
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but hope its what is advertised.