The Property and land next door has started causing a flood issue on mine

rjpop

Hi All,

I seek a bit of advice. We live on a hill and over the last 10 years, whenever there has been a severe storm the space underneath our house fills up with rain water and it almost comes up through the floor boards. We feel it's only a matter of time before a severe storm does flood our home. Our garage also floods and we've had to throw things away that was in there.

We feel that the source of this problem is the school field on the slope behind our house, which was relandscaped and had trees removed about 10 years ago, we can see the rain water now runs straight off it and into onto out property. We've done quite a bit of research on this, and we think the builders who did it may have done a bodge job with some pipework as well as the sloping being done to force the water our way.

We've have repeatedly complained to the company who do the schools facilities management and have got the local councilor involved. Eventually their insurance company sent out someone to survey the school playing fields, we also allowed this person to come onto our property and survey it. The feeling we got from him was that the builders who did the landscaping were at fault.

The surveyors report has now completed. However, the schools insurance company have withheld it and refused to share it with us. They've told us to tell our Insurance company to contact them. We have not made a claim and do not wish to do so unless of course we get flooded out. Which is an appalling situation as we just feel like we have to wait to be flooded out of our home before any action can be taken.

So what are out rights?
Surely they can't withhold the surveyors report from us after it was done on our properly. How do we get it from them?
Also, what's the best way to pursue this without involving our insurance company?

Many Thanks

Richard

elsien

You don’t have to make an insurance claim if you don’t want to, but if parts of your house are flooding then it’s material fact that you you should have told the insurer about already while making clear that you weren’t claiming.
on that basis, then why not go through your insurance? The other party’s insurer has commissioned and paid for the report so it’s their decision as to who to share it with.

rjpop

elsien said:

You don’t have to make an insurance claim if you don’t want to, but if parts of your house are flooding then it’s material fact that you you should have told the insurer about already while making clear that you weren’t claiming.
on that basis, then why not go through your insurance? The other party’s insurer has commissioned and paid for the report so it’s their decision as to who to share it with.

Hi Elsien

Thanks for your reply. 

We've not gone through our insurance company because in truth, we are absolutely petrified of the consequences of doing so. We don't want to be left with a worthless house that we can't insure.

Also, for a while we genuinely thought that it was just freak weather events that had never occurred before and may never happen again in our lifetime. We got the assistance local councilor and can see how recent changes to the playing fields behind have caused this problem.

Is there any risk to contacting the Insurance Company in your opinion?

Richard