Tower block standpipe blockage rented flat flood

Joe901

I'd be grateful for some advice. We live in a tower block apartment in Glasgow, 10th floor up with a further 7 floors above us. Most/all of the apartments, including ours, are rented from a housing association. My partner arrived home recently to find waste water pouring over our kitchen sink, flooding all the units and contents on that side onto the kitchen floor and into the living room. Waste water was found inside our washing machine and dishwasher. We immediately phoned the housing association repair line and, after 12 hours with various plumber and drain blockage specialist visits, they eventually located and cleared a blockage below us in one of the building's main stand pipes (carries kitchen waste from building top to bottom). The blockage resulted in the kitchen waste from all connected flats above us intermittently back flowing into and over our kitchen sink. At times the sink filled up so quickly that we were unable to prevent additional flooding. The contents of the waste was foul smelling and disgusting and included bits of food, oil, black grainy substance. I'm sure this would also include build up (over the years) from the inside of the pipe itself and bits of the blockage also built up over time.
This also flooded the downstairs flat immediately below us and put off their electricity for some hours.

In taking 12 hours to get to the root cause we feel this is overly excessive and resulted in additional stress for us and additional damage as a result of spillage through slipping on wet flooring and general tiredness of doing this for that length of time - spillage which went over additional items in the kitchen e.g. units on other side of kitchen (the kitchen is tiny) and living room e.g. furniture. The housing association organised a company to do a deep surface clean of our worktops however they were not able to clean the inside of our affected kitchen white goods (dishwasher etc), food processors etc.

While we can claim on our contents insurance this would incur an excess and likely premium increase, so instead we are looking at claiming through the housing association's public liability insurance. They have sent us a form for this.

Our questions are:
1. Can we reasonably define this waste liquid as having health and safety damage potential e.g. chemical, microbial, unknown (we don't know what folk have poured down the waste pipe), etc ?
2. Is the public liability insurance route a reasonable route to pursue a claim here or would you advise us going through our own contents insurance (which will have their own limitations) ?
3. If we went through our own contents insurance would it be reasonably expected that the housing association would pay additionally for the initial excess we would incur and pay to offset any possible premium increase?
4. Would it be reasonable for us to not want to use, and request/demand replacements, for waste contaminated items such as cutlery, crockery, pots and pans, food processors?
5. Would it be reasonable for us to expect carpets and kitchen linoleum flooring to be replaced at no cost to us.
6. Can we reasonably claim for replacement affected furniture, washing machine, etc - assuming they would normally be condemned on health and safety grounds?
7. All our household towels and a number of additional items e.g. some clothing were contaminated as we tried our best to prevent additional flooding to us and below. Can we claim reasonably replacements for these?

We'd be very grateful for any advice on the above and for anything additional that might help us.

forgotmyname

You claim from your insurance and they (if possible) seek to recover the costs from any guilty party.

You cannot claim from your policy and the 3rd party.

White goods are dirty, stick them on a boil wash with some detergent.
All risks will be removed.