Car damage

Linzimain87

So on Christmas eve my car was damaged by a roof blowing off a set of garages next to where I park my car outside my house. This was just a few tiles the whole roof has blown off. The front of my car has some real terrible scratches. The garages are owned by the housing association I rent off. I phoned the housing associstion Christmas eve to report the garage as an emergency repair has the roof was still hanging off. Just wondering how do I get the housing association to pay for the repairs on my car.  Any advice is appreciated. 

kipperman

I guess it depends how much hassle you want : you could claim on your car insurance, providing full details and hope that the insurance company in turn claims from the housing association (or more likely their insurers) thus preserving any NCB you might have.

 Equally you could directly try and deal with the HA - but they will almost certainly refer you to their insurers and probably a whole world of pain, hassle and time for you. I'd go option A - but you might even find that the HA isn't necessarily liable unless they have been negligent - and you would have to prove that.

Linzimain87

Surely they are liable coz the whole roof came off and to be honest the roof wasn't in a good state before it came off. 8 years of living here and I've never once seen them do any kind of maintenance on those garages

HampshireH

The HA should have provided you with details of their Insurance to make a claim.

I suggest you get a load of photos to support it of the garages and your car and formally start the process.

Most HAs don't carry out substantial works on their garages but they usually get checked every few months for condition. That may form part of their assessment but obviously a freak accident like a whole roof coming off is unforeseen unless in disrepair.

Linzimain87

Thanks I took loads of pics when it happened of my car and the garages. Going to phone them this morning 

TELLIT01

I'm assuming this was caused by a storm, so the HA's insurers may say you have to claim off your own insurance.  If you can prove that the garage roof was in a poor state of repair, and that the HA was aware of that the situation may be different.  I would certainly try to claim on the HA insurance in the first instance.

user1977

Linzimain87 said:

Surely they are liable coz the whole roof came off and to be honest the roof wasn't in a good state before it came off. 8 years of living here and I've never once seen them do any kind of maintenance on those garages

You (or your insurer) would need to prove negligence on the part of the HA. Roofs don't necessarily need any work done during an 8 year period and storms will damage even perfectly-maintained roofs.

DullGreyGuy

Linzimain87 said:

Surely they are liable coz the whole roof came off and to be honest the roof wasn't in a good state before it came off. 8 years of living here and I've never once seen them do any kind of maintenance on those garages

Do you have evidence it was in a poor state of repair and that they had been informed of the fact? Typically storm damage comes under act of god and so each party claims off their own insurance.

HampshireH said:

The HA should have provided you with details of their Insurance to make a claim.

They have no legal obligation to even have insurance let alone share the details with anyone else. Unlike Motor or Employers Liability its up to them to decide if they want to have their insurers deal with the matter or not. Large housing associations with thousands of properties don't go around insuring from the ground up... its not a case of if they are going to have a claim in any given year but how many hundreds of thousands/millions the claims will be this year.

If you know you will suffer £10m of losses each year you'd be a bit silly to spend £15m insuring that first £10m but better off buying a policy that covers losses over £10m for a fraction of the price