Hundreds of claimants whose properties and businesses were ruined in Britain's biggest peacetime explosion are set for a £700 million payout after Total, one of Europe's largest oil companies, abandoned a key part of its defence against a lawsuit yesterday.

Total is fighting a legal action brought by insurance companies, businesses and 272 local residents affected by the blast at the Buncefield fuel storage depot in Hertfordshire in December 2005. Forty-three people were injured in the explosion.

The surprising climbdown came as Total admitted to the High Court in London that damage caused by the explosion and the subsequent fire could have been predicted — a key pillar of establishing liability for negligence under English law.

Total had conceded in preliminary hearings that the blast was the result of negligence by the supervisor on duty at the time, but it continued to argue that only damage within 451 metres of the blast was foreseeable. That meant that most of the local residents and small businesses involved in the case, located up to three kilometres away, had to fight to prove their claims for uninsured losses.

Although those claims are collectively worth only £8 million — the bulk of the lawsuit relates to damage to large commercial operations and properties — lawyers for local residents told the court last week that clients had been forced to endure years of distress.

The case continues.

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