Help! Claim refused after flooding

Sir_Leslie_Phillips

Hi 

Really hoping someone may be kind enough to provide me with some advice.

We live in a 150-ish year old stone cottage (semi). The rear wall is of stone construction (with no door, only windows) and there is a very narrow passageway, approx 2.5ft wide, before a retaining dry stone wall. This passageway has a concreted path that goes right up to both the external and retaining wall. I jet-washed the drains in September (just before Storm Babette) and again in April.

On 12th May, we had a deluge of biblical proportions. Next doors down pipe had become loose and the rainwater was pouring onto the pathway, causing the silt traps on our land drains to become blocked. the pathway filled to about 18inches deep. as a result, significant rainwater entered our property, damaging carpets, sofa and furniture.

 We took plenty of photos and only this morning, the Insurance Assessor came to inspect the damage. He determined, rather quickly, that our claim could not be upheld as we were negligent. Apparently, we should not have the concreted path right up to the property and this was the cause of the flooding.

 I pointed out that the path was like this when we purchased the property in 2003 and we've never experienced this before. I also mentioned that - as a layman - this was the first time this had been pointed out to us. Neither our Home Buyers Report from 2003 highlighted this, nor does it feature in the many questions when completing an annual Building & Contents Insurance application.

 We purchased the Cover in good faith, have never claimed before and are in a position where there is several thousand pounds worth of damage - and we are not covered. It just seems so unreasonable.

  This is the 1st year we haven't taken Accidental Damage out - we've never claimed, and the Cost of Living ship-show has caught up with us. The Assessor kindly pointed out that if we had this, we could have pursued it on that front......

 advice would be greatly appreciated - and sorry for the waffling - just dumbstruck!

dunstonh

 Neither our Home Buyers Report from 2003 highlighted this, nor does it feature in the many questions when completing an annual Building & Contents Insurance application.

Home buyer reports (the middle version between the valuation report and the surveyor report) are pretty useless.   I would even go as far to say they are not worth the money.   Only the surveyors report (or a further structural engineers report if required) is worth the cost.

 Apparently, we should not have the concreted path right up to the property and this was the cause of the flooding.

Any hard surface that goes up to the house should slope away from it and have a means of draining or soaking away.

  This is the 1st year we haven't taken Accidental Damage out - we've never claimed, and the Cost of Living ship-show has caught up with us. The Assessor kindly pointed out that if we had this, we could have pursued it on that front......

Ultimately, if you disagree with the insurer, you can raise a complaint.   However, if it does fall under something categorised as accidental and you don't have accidental, then a complaint is unlikely to change that.

I am not in a position to verify if that is accidental damage or not. I will leave that to DDG or someone else with better knowledge (was it an accident that the concrete wasn't put in correctly?)

Sir_Leslie_Phillips

Hi Dunstonh

Many thanks for taking the time to respond, it really is appreciated.

I'm still in utter shock from this decision, totally blindsided me.

I can't for the life of me understand as to how a concrete path - that was already here before we purchased the house, constitutes itself as us 'failing to maintain the buildings properly' and is the cause for our claim being rejected.

I have raised a complaint, but I'm sure it'll be several weeks to hear the inevitable back from them. Just seems so harsh when we assumed we were covered.......

DullGreyGuy

Do you have a link to your policy book online?

So did all the water come from the neighbours down pipe and direct rainfall or was it also coming through the retaining wall etc? (Didnt realise a retaining wall could be dry stone, surprised that they are structural enough). 

Ultimately you need to first have them confirm on which clause they are denying the claim, it's likely to be one on poor design/workmanship rather than maintenance. Then knowing that to check the policy book. 

If you feel you still have grounds for argument then a complaint

Sir_Leslie_Phillips

Nightmare, just found the following........

Poor Workmanship

Loss or damage caused by poor workmanship, use of faulty materials (including latent defects) or poor design (a latent defect is a fault which exists but which only causes a problem at a later stage under certain conditions).

I guess, unlike our external wall, this could be water-tight for them.

the issue for us here though is that we were unaware that this was indeed poor workmanship. I take your earlier point that Home-Buyer Reports aren't fit to wipe your bottom with, but I'm a conservationist. If you want to know how to save black grouse and curlew from extinction, I can contribute.
If you ask me for an opinion on how the design and construction of a pathway, built by contractors from a previous owner stands up to UK Regs and Home & Building needs, I'm at a total loss!

Again, so bitterly unfair!!

Sir_Leslie_Phillips

So did all the water come from the neighbours down pipe and direct rainfall or was it also coming through the retaining wall etc?

Next door's down pipe starts on their side of the rear flat roof, but feeds into our land drain ( they now have a vented soil pipe in place where I presume the down-pipe once was).
She is in a home and hasn't been living here for a couple of years, so am reluctant to raise it with her family.

The pipe had become dislodged and was gushing onto our 'latent-defected' concrete path, pushing debris that blocked the drain covers.
as we'd cleared the drains twice since September, it was easy and straightforward to get them functioning. Its never happened before (in far worse conditions over the last 21 years), which leads me to suspect the down-pipe - and water not getting into the land drain was the main factor here.

DullGreyGuy

Ultimately you need to put in a complaint and the fact its been like that for over 21 years and never caused a problem is an argument that whilst not the perfect design it does adequately cope with storms without issue. The issue is the unforeseen and not designed for issue of the failure of the neighbours downpipe. This ultimately resulted as Flood damage. Double check the definition of Flood, most are very basic and dont require a specific source of the water other than it comes from outside of the property (ie it cannot be excluded because it resulted from a failure of the pipe on the neighbours property)

If you wanted to go further you'd need to commission a surveyor to check guidelines at the time of construction and how well it adheres to it, eg does it slop away from the property at the recommended minimum angle. It's unlikely the cost of the report would be recoverable and so may be worth doing the complaint without it and only consider it if the complaint needs escalating to the ombudsman. 

Sir_Leslie_Phillips

Wow -thank you ever so much not-so-DullGreyGuy!!

This was the point I was trying to put across to the Assessor, but failed miserably in articulating myself!
Many thanks, we really appreciate the useful feedback received.

DullGreyGuy

Sir_Leslie_Phillips said:

Wow -thank you ever so much not-so-DullGreyGuy!!

I've worked in insurance for over 2 decades and still find it a really interesting subject (though dont deal with claims or consumer insurance these days)... by most peoples definition its rather dull.

On the plus side I do know that when Space Launch insurance comes into force depends on if the rocket is liquid or solid fuel 

daveyjp

If it was defective design your property would flood each time it rained.

If it is an extreme weather event (you may need local rainfall records to show this) it is unacceptable to suggest all buildings should be designed to cope with all eventualities.  Was the design of a local bridge inadequate when in 2015 it couldn't cope with a river 4.2m above normal and caused flooding to hundreds of homes?!

BarelySentientAI

daveyjp said:

If it was defective design your property would flood each time it rained.

If it is an extreme weather event (you may need local rainfall records to show this) it is unacceptable to suggest all buildings should be designed to cope with all eventualities.  Was the design of a local bridge inadequate when in 2015 it couldn't cope with a river 4.2m above normal and caused flooding to hundreds of homes?!

Except that isn't true.

If a design is required to cope with a 1 in 10 year event, and does so successfully, but fails at a 1 in 50 year event, then the design is not defective.

If a design is required to cope with a 1 in 50 year event, but fails at a 1 in 10 year event, then the design is defective 

Neither design would fail "each time it rained".