to feel the landlord is being unreasonable?

[Yolo89]

So my husband left the tap running and the sink overflow failed, causing water to leak two floors below. They came and without really looking told us that the sink overglow was blocked. It isnt and there is no way they could know unless they took apart the sink. Now they are trying to charge us £500 for repairs for the leak in two flats.

There could be old leak damage from the boiler leaking too - how wpuld we know what is what?

They are also only giving us 14 dats to pay.

please help - what are my rights?

Qhen the boiler in the flat above leaked, they never came and fixed the leak damage.

Thet also tried to make us pay for our boiler when it leaked even though i found out it was defective. Funnily when I brought it up they never mentioned again.

Hence there is no trust

Op. Can you answer why you didn’t have tenant insurance please?

I don't understand how your landlord doesn't have insurance that will cover this? They probably do but don't want their premiums going up. Get them to claim off the insurance as it'll be paid from your rent.

As has been said a few times, the amount being asked for is not enough for remedial works afetr a water leak. It is most likely that OP is being asked to pay the insurance excess. That is REALLY generous as it is always possible with water damage that an insurers will refuse to cover parts of the claim.

OPs landlord for example, may be told to claim from OPs insurance. In which case he wil find himself out of pocket through no fault of his own. Even if OP had insurance they might not cover it, as it is negligent to leave taps running!

Which is why I said try and get the £500 acknowledged as the full and final payment! It's a relatively cheap lesson to learn given the full amount of the damage is guaranteed to be a couple of thousand at least: 2 x floors, 2 x ceilings, various walls, sundry electrics all to be dried, repaired/replaced and repainted/refitted.

You can reverse this; "My tenants let an unattended sink overflow for so long that the water seeped down and did damage to both their flat and two flats below. The damage will cost thousands to repair, but fortunately I have good insurance which will cover it. I have asked them to pay just the excess, which is £500. They are refusing to do so, saying the sink was faulty so it is nothing to do with them, and I can basically go whistle for my money. They seem to think that if you leave the plug in and the tap on, the overflow should be able to cope with the flow of the water, and because it didn't, it is not their fault. They don't seem to understand that a small overflow outlet is designed to deal with smaller amounts of water only. AIBU in asking them to pay the excess?"
I think I know what the answers to this would be.

You make a very good point longearedbat

YABVVU. Multiple posters have explained how an overflow works. You have ignored this. Behaviour like this is exactly what puts me off having tenants. Guaranteed the repair bill is £500 multiplied serveral times and you are simply being asked to pay the excess. Having worked in property I can tell you that the excess for escape of water is almost always at least twice the excess for any other type of claim (and in fact £500 is a pretty common escape of water excess). With some policies, leaving a tap running wouldn’t even be covered. Stop trying to find a get out clause because there isn’t one.

The landlord will just take it out your bond if you don’t pay