Leak in conservatory roof

Laineyrose

My conservatory roof has a small leak. When I checked the roof there are a lot of holes where debris from my next door neighbours roof ridge tiles has been falling onto my roof.  I’ve never had a problem before and conservatory was done in 2002.  Can I get my neighbour’s to pay for the damage through their insurance or would I have to go through my home insurance?

cw8825

Can you prove that your neighbour has caused the damage from their negligence?

your unlikely to claim through your own as it would either be west and tear over a matter of time of seperate claims for each point of damage?

I would say both insurers will claim wear and tear so will be excluded by both. 

Aretnap

To claim from your neighbour, or his insurer, you would have to establish that the damage was caused by negligence on his part. Negligence means a failure to take the level of care that would be expected if a reasonable person - it's not enough to say that the debris fell off his roof so he is responsible.

So what do you think a reasonable person would have done differently too prevent the damage? For example, what does his roof look like from the ground? Is it obviously in such a poor state of repair that a normal person would have realised that it was putting his neighbours at risk? Or is that only obvious with hindsight now that you have identified the problem? 

Meanwhile if you claim through your own insurance this sounds like multiple incidents. If there are six holes that's six incidents, six claims and six excesses to pay, unless you can argue that all the bits of debris fell at the same time in a single incident. 

Might be worth getting a quote for repairs before you try to claim - it might not come to too much.

DullGreyGuy

Laineyrose said:

My conservatory roof has a small leak. When I checked the roof there are a lot of holes where debris from my next door neighbours roof ridge tiles has been falling onto my roof.  I’ve never had a problem before and conservatory was done in 2002.  Can I get my neighbour’s to pay for the damage through their insurance or would I have to go through my home insurance?

What on earth is the "debris" that is able to make holes in a roof from a relatively small fall? What's your conservatory roof made out of? Playdoh?  Do you have a photo of the holes?

Aretnap said:

Meanwhile if you claim through your own insurance this sounds like multiple incidents. If there are six holes that's six incidents, six claims and six excesses to pay, unless you can argue that all the bits of debris fell at the same time in a single incident. 

In principle, the OP may have a bigger issue of not being able to pinpoint when the event or events happened. That said there was a FOS case a long way back where the insured had claimed for insect damage to woodwork and the insurer tried to say there were 300+ holes and therefore it was 300+ incidents and so 300+ claims and excesses. I can't remember how many the FOS decided to reduce it to but is was a low single digit number. 

eddddy

If you believe that your neighbour was negligent, then you can claim the repair costs from your neighbour.

Perhaps your best shot at proving negligence would be if something like this happened...

• The neighbour knew debris was falling from their roof onto your conservatory (maybe because you told them), but they didn't take reasonable steps to do something about it. As a result, further damage occurred.

• So you could claim for the further damage from your neighbour.

It's up to your neighbour whether they pay any damages out of their own pocket, or make an insurance claim  (probably under the Property Owner's Liability section of their home insurance).


Sometimes people feel a moral duty to pay their neighbour's damages in situations like this, to maintain good neighbourly relations - even though they haven't been negligent. So you could ask them to pay on this basis if you want to.

(But if the payment is a 'goodwill gesture', the neighbour won't be able to claim that back from their insurers.)

TELLIT01

I'm guessing the roof is either polycarbonate or corrugated pvc.  Either could potentially be holed by bits of cement filler from the ridge tiles falling on to it. 

Unless the OP has previously informed the neighbour that cement from their ridge tiles is damaging their roof I wouldn't see any way they could say the neighbour has been negligent.

Laineyrose

Hi all, I did tell my neighbour that their ridge tiles were falling down the roof around 8 months ago. The neighbour thanked me for telling them, but nothing has been done about it, and I’m surprised they don’t have leaks in their property.  I have attached some photos to show this.  I know the conservatory was done a long time ago (2002),but never had any problem until recently. Can holes just appear with polycarbonate I don’t know. 

TELLIT01

I'm surprised that bits of cement would do damage that far from the roof edge unless there were severe storms.  My original response was on the assumption that the house roof was a full storey above the conservatory roof.

The polycarbonate roof is over 20 years old so could it be very brittle and unable to cope even with minimal contact?