Water leak - who pays the excess?

smem18

Hi everyone, having a horrible week here. We live in a block of flats. On Monday night, at about 1am, our heat exchange unit started leaking water. We were obviously asleep at the time and didn’t discover the leak until 8am the next morning. It caused significant damage, flooding the communal hallway and damaging the laminate and carpets of the other flats on our floor. 

Whilst the laminate is covered by the buildings insurance we all share as leaseholders, the carpets are considered “contents” so covered by individual insurance policies. Excess for escape of water is around £350-£450 per flat depending on what policy each flat has. Several neighbours have been round to us asking “who is going to pay their excess for a new carpet because it wasn’t their fault they got flooded”. However, it also isn’t our fault our unit leaked. We have a service agreement on it and it was fully inspected and serviced within the last 12 months. We were in the flat at the time. So we didn’t do anything negligent. It’s just a very unfortunate and unlucky incident. A couple of neighbours have asked for our insurance details but I am not sure they could claim on our contents as we are not making a claim for any carpets ourselves in our own flat?

My thoughts are that if you didn’t pay extra to zero your excess when you took your policy out then that is sadly your problem? If we had been negligent then we would be responsible, but we haven’t been. Can they try to claim off our insurance without it affecting us financially? I really have no idea how this works or what to do. 

user1977

If you haven't been negligent then no, they can't "claim off your insurance", as your insurance only covers you for things you'd be liable for yourself. It's just one of those things, everybody has to bear their own excess.

Aretnap

Most things that you could claim for on your home/contents insurance are things that are not your fault. Fires, floods, burglaries, storm damage etc - very few of these are the home owner's fault. The homeowner still has to pay his excess.

If paying your excess because of something that wasn't your fault is unacceptable to you, the only other option is to choose a policy with no excess, or at least as low an excess as possible.

You're correct that unless you acted negligently (ie you failed to take the amount of care that would be expected of a reasonable person), neither you nor your insurer is liable for the damage to other people's flats. (And this applies whether or not you are planning to make a claim for your own carpets etc)

So yes it's unfortunate for your neighbours. But a lot of things in life are unfortunate. Luckily it sounds like they all have insurance - if they didn't they would be completely stuffed. 

smem18

Thanks - this is what I thought. I have thought and thought about if there was anything we could have done differently or any way we were negligent but it really was just an unfortunate event:
> We were in the flat, it’s just that it was 1am so we were asleep and did not get up for work until 8am when we discovered the leak. We know it started around 1am because this is when the electricity tripped out and I can see my fish tank light timer stopped then!
> We usually work from home and sit right near the unit! If it happened during the day we would have heard the water leaking. Again, so unfortunate it happened at night.
> We have a service contract on the unit and it was inspected within the last 12 months (in August 2020). This was a pre-inspection that was a condition of being able to take out the contract where they specifically checked all the parts were in good working order. Again unfortunate the leak happened now as we were due our next annual inspection in just one months time!
> The moment we discovered the leak we isolated the water immediately, stopping the leak, and had an engineer on-site within an hour to fix our unit. 

The neighbours view is “it wasn’t our fault the leak happened” but they’ve also said to us “we know it wasn’t your fault either”. But they still say they don’t see why they should have to pay anything. They seem to think they can somehow claim off our insurance but I don’t think it works like that? From what I have read, that would only work if they could prove we were negligent but that’s not the case. Like the poster above had said, my position is….that’s life. If you didn’t pay to reduce it zero your excess when you took out your contents insurance then that’s a lesson learned. We didn’t either and in the future I would. If we had been negligent or not had our unit serviced, I would buy them new carpets and just take the hit.

eddddy

I think this is more a question of "How do I deal with neighbours with unrealistic expectations, who don't believe me when I say I'm not liable?"

Obviously, you don't want this to escalate into confrontations and disputes with your neighbours - which you might have to declare to prospective buyers when you sell your flat (as that's likely to scare buyers).


Perhaps suggesting to your neighbours that they contact a 3rd party to confirm what you say is correct, would help. Perhaps...

- Their own insurers

- The management company of your flats (it's not really anything to do with them, but they might informally explain the situation to other flat owners)

- or referring them to authoritative information on the web

mattyprice4004

I would invite them to contact your insurers who can clarify their position for you.