Anyone with experience of subsidence?

[Ninoo25]

Does anyone on here have any experience of dealing with subsidence in their home? I’m pretty sure we’ve got subsidence I’m our bathroom and kitchen below it. There have slowly been cracks appearing in tiles by windows and in the corner of the ceiling over the past couple of years and there is a large crack in our rendering in the same sort of area.
We’ve never had any issues like this before and was wondering where do we start with putting this right, how much it’s likely to cost and whether house insurance normally covers this (we have no money!)
Who is it that we contact first? A structural engineer? Our insurance company? And does anyone know if even when fixed it will affect the value of our house or mortgage? TIA everyone

Sorry subsidence in our bathroom

Stupid autocorrect!

yes we have had a big issue a few years ago due to trees and clay soil. This year many people will have issues due to the dry weather. We had a survey done by a structural engineer who said that a concrete floor had sunk causing the cracks but the walls were ok and didn't need underpinning. We had the repairs done through our insurance and paid an excess of £1000. Not unusual for subsidence. We felled loads of trees.Which we could have done anyway. They say claims will be massive this year. It was very distruptive, I am not absolutely sure we made the right decision. Our insurance premium has gone up big time and we may have trouble if we want to change companies. Some little cracks are starting again in the same places

Incidentally, I was not quite sure if I wanted to go down the insurance route but I found out, having rung them for advice that the process was started and the Insurance company had logged we had the problem. The survey and tree survey you can do independently. In fact the Insurance insisted on the former. My next door neighbour found his own claim a pain too!

We now have to declare it if we sell

We contacted our insurance company. They dealt with getting someone in to do the work (despite the contractor saying this was the worst case he'd seen, underpinning wasn't required) then on our request allowed us to choose our own redecorator and gave us the money that they'd allocated to that part of the work.

They have continued to insure us, but merely slapped an extra £1000 excess on subsidence claims - the premium doesn't seem to have gone up abnormally. This was over 10 years ago, and there's been no recurrence.

We had similar cracks in early 2000s. Contacted our house insurance. They investigated - crack monitoring, inspection of garden, hole dug under living room to look at state soil. All very professional. Concluded that we had minor subsidence due to very dry soil. Also recommended near neighbours reduce size of massive trees as roots probably below our house (they didn't) All cracks repaired with a metal gauze and entire rooms redecorated (living room, hallway and one bedroom) Cost £1000 in insurance excess.
Fast forward 5 years and cracks back. Same process repeated but this time roots from neighbour's giant trees found in our front garden, 100 metres away from said trees. Insurance felled 2 massive trees in neighbour's garden, repairs to cracks and redecorating of 4 rooms. No excess this time as problem not fixed last time. Subsidence hasn't returned but insurance premiums sky high for 5 years after repairs (£800+ for 3 bed semi)
Hope this helps. Happy to answer any questions you have.

As Confusedbeetle says, merely phoning your insurance with a query will mean they'll log "suspected subsidence" on your details. Not a problem if you're pretty sure you have it, but if you're not sure, you can get a structural survey done by an independent firm of surveyors (will cost a few hundred pounds). First step is to google "structural cracks" and look at all the advice there. A lot of cracking is nothing to do with subsidence.