Insurance for flat that's not occupied

Murmansk

I live in an old Victorian house divided into 4 flats, one on each of 4 floors.

We have a management company that consists of the 4 flat owners and that owns the freehold, the flats are all on thousand year leases to the management company.

We insure our own contents but the whole building is insured on a separate policy which we arrange.

One of the flats is owned by someone who lives elsewhere and hasn't visited it for 3 years. I'm concerned that the flat is unoccupied as I think in the insurance document it says cover will be affected if it's unoccupied for 30 days or more. I'm always concerned that in the event of a claim an insurance company will do what they can to refuse the claim and this might be a ground for them to do this here.

Lets say the whole place was destroyed by fire that started in one of the occupied flats - could they refuse to pay out based on what I've said even though the non-occupied-ness of the flat wasn't relevant to the fire?

Sandtree

Murmansk said:
I think in the insurance document it says cover will be affected if it's unoccupied for 30 days or more. 

30 days would be an unusual clause in a Block policy.

Most Block insurers are fairly comfortable with unoccupied units within the block as long as they are told about it, some will adjust the price, some won't, probably the worse case scenario for a correctly declared unoccupied unit is that escape of water from that unit is excluded but then if the property is long term empty you'd hope their water is turned off and system drained anyway.

Each individual unit's contents insurance is likely to have a 30 day clause but that on relates to their personal flat. You as the leaseholder of a particular unit cannot have a claim from your insurance excluded due to the actions of another leaseholder of a different unit

user1977

Murmansk said:

I'm concerned that the flat is unoccupied as I think in the insurance document it says cover will be affected if it's unoccupied for 30 days or more. I'm always concerned that in the event of a claim an insurance company will do what they can to refuse the claim and this might be a ground for them to do this here.

Lets say the whole place was destroyed by fire that started in one of the occupied flats - could they refuse to pay out based on what I've said even though the non-occupied-ness of the flat wasn't relevant to the fire?

No, despite popular opinion it isn't quite as easy as that for insurers just to walk away from claims based on a technicality. Would be different if it was, say, a burst pipe in the unoccupied flat.

Murmansk said:
I think in the insurance document it says...

Go and read it. What does it actually say?

Sandtree

user1977 said:
No, despite popular opinion it isn't quite as easy as that for insurers just to walk away from claims based on a technicality. Would be different if it was, say, a burst pipe in the unoccupied flat.

I would argue that Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012  did make it easier for insurers to avoid claims as there is no requirement for the loss to be related to the undisclosed fact. In this case however it should be a commercial block insurance policy and therefore unlikely to fall under the terms of CIDRA