Home insurance as a Council tenant

PJC88

Hiya. 
As a Council tenant, I was lead to believe that instead of building and content insurance, that I only require content insurance. I checked on 'look after my bills' for a quick quote, and it appears if there is a potential leak from a radiator then its the building and content insurance that covers this, not content only?

Reason I'm asking as you may have guessed, the bar continues to drop on the boiler and it seems there may be a leak. So, before taking out the insurance, I don't want to pay double for something I don't need. 


Thanks 

2021BJ

If you're a tenant the building is not your responsibility so you have no need to insure it.

Even if it was, your central heating system wouldn't be covered by your buildings insurance anyway.

[Deleted User]

 Ring your landlord and they will fix it 

Sandtree

For a start, your insurance wont cover this leak as it started before you bought the policy.

Buildings insurance typically covers the bricks and morter of the building plus all the fixtures and fittings like the kitchen, wall paper, plumbing etc
Contents covers all the moveable stuff in the property.
The old training way of teaching people is "turn the house upside down and shake, everything that falls out is contents, everything left behind is buildings". This does leave a few slightly grey areas like carpets but they typically are contents.

Insurance covers damage caused by insured perils (fire, flood, accidental damage etc) but it is not a maintenance contract so things getting old and breaking isnt covered.

Typically in a rental situation your landlord is responsible for maintaining the building and fixing damage when things go wrong other than things you do to break things. So assuming this is a maintenance issue then they would have to pay for the repair out of their own pocket, if there was damage to the walls etc then their buildings insurance could cover repairing that (it would in reallity be too small for a council to claim) and your contents insurance would cover if it had damaged your carpet or your sofa that had been pressed up against it had you had insurance.

The one complexity is if you do things to your property to improve the quality of the fixtures and fittings, like put in a new kitchen, in which case some insurers will allow you to include Tenants Improvements on the contents policy. Similarly if you accidentally damage an item that is your landlords then most also have Tenant Liability cover as standard (doesnt cover things you do intentionally).