Residential Property Subsidence Damage
Background
Our client submitted a claim for subsidence damage at one of their properties in North London.
Problem
The insurers instructed a loss adjuster and contractors to prepare a repair schedule for superstructure repairs, once the property had been stabilised following removal of trees which had caused the instability and cracking.
We reviewed the repair specification and noticed that they were looking to exclude certain parts of the property from the damage repairs, commenting “NOT PART OF THIS CLAIM” and “PREVIOUS SUBS”.
What we did
We checked our records and found that this property had been the subject of two previous subsidence claims, back in 2002 (settled at £35,843) and in 2011 (settled at £14,357). After further inspection we discovered that the current insurer had in fact been insuring the property at the time of the previous claims. We pointed out to them that if there was historical damage from a previous event, it would still be down to them to pay for it. The insurer had either missed the damage or they had not carried out sufficient repairs.
Outcome
The insurer checked their own records and agreed with us that they were in fact liable for all damage repairs that now needed to be carried out, so advised their loss adjuster and contractors to bill them for all of the works and confirmed that nothing was to be excluded.
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