Slow leak escape of water damage repudiated by insurance company

jocon

Last October 2023 we discovered a slow water leak under the floorboards in our living room.

• In the summer of 2017 I noticed what looked like damp on the walls of our downstairs WC and the other side of each wall in our living room and kitchen. I called out a damp expert who reported that the cause was not rising damp but instead, condensation. She advised that we better aired the rooms and do no drying of clothes on the radiators. I redecorated the walls and took her advice. Soon afterwards we decided to rent out the property, taking out landlords property insurance.
• Over time the damage reappeared and with the property now occupied with tenants I decided to redecorate once again last summer. I also set about investigating any other causes of the damp. I repointed the outside walls, checked for any possible points of ingress, filled in all exterior holes around drainage pipes and installed double glazing.
• Then the local gas company decided to install new gas meters in all our street. This required them putting new pipework under our house and lifting up the carpet and the floorboards in our living room. It was then they discovered an enormous puddle caused by a slowly trickling leak from the mains pipe.

The leak was immediately fixed and the insurers informed.

The insurers asked for the original report from the damp expert and quotes for repairs including drying out the walls and the cavity under the floors, removing and repairing of a number of rotten joists under the floor, repairing the walls, lifting the floors in the WC and Kitchen, removing most of the fitted kitchen and repair of the concrete floors in the kitchen and bathroom. 

After 3 months the insurance company have now repudiated the claim made for the repairs saying that as the cause of damage predated the period of the policy then I have no right to claim.

This seems wrong to me as the damage was continuous and developed over a period of time. 

As an example, whoever heard of subsidence being rejected because the original building works took place  many years ago. It was something that happened over a period of time!

Can anyone with knowledge of these things advise me on how to challenge this decision by the underwriters of the insurance company.  

All the years of insurance I was insured for damage caused by “escape of water” and if it is relevant, I had the insurance for all but one of the years I rented the property since 2017 with the same insurance company with the underwriters being the same also.

Any help would be very greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

DullGreyGuy

Subsidence is a bad example because it doesn't start all of a sudden, unlike a leak, and because of that there are industry agreements as to which insurer deals with it when the policyholder has switched insurers recently. 

A leak does have a definitive start point, though can hard to pin if it's a slow leak in a wall etc. On the basis the issue was first observed in 2017 it does appear they are correct in saying it's a pre-existing issue and so not covered under this policy. You would in theory need to go back to the insurer you had in 2017 and attempt to make the claim from them but as thats over 6 years ago that could be problematic. The alternative is to go back through each insurer at a time and see if any post 2017 accept that it was them.