House fire no one hurt

[fontime]

Please help we have had a serious house fire. It's unliveable but thankfully no one's hurt. We have contacted house insurance and awaiting their call. Can anyone advise what to expect ? will they provide housing? Do claims take along time? Will insurance deal with it all? I appreciate it depend on insurance co but wondering what others experience is?

Red Cross can help in situations like this. Can try calling them or asking Fire Brigade if they refer.

Am so sorry. Glad everyone is ok.

There was a recent thread www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/4565904-our-house-burnt-down
Some people's experience there.

Sorry to hear about your house @fontime

According to Shelter the Council has responsibility to house you.

Homelessness help from the council
Your local council normally has a duty to provide you with emergency accommodation if you're made homeless by fire.
Anyone made homeless by a fire is automatically treated as being in priority needd_ for homelessness help.
Contact your local council to make a homelessness applicationn_.

We had similar about 5 years ago. One of our electrical sockets in the kitchen had a fault and the whole kitchen was gone but other rooms had smoke damage. Thankfully the dog woke woke dh and they both got out ok. He was working nights at the time and was the only one home.

I called the insurance company who took five days to send someone out(apparently I was so calm they didn't realise how serious it was).

Our insurance was with Lloyd's bank and I can only say that they were amazing. They had a temporary kitchen unit with dining area delivered the next day which was set up on the drive, they sent an independent company to empty the kitchen and do an inventory of everything that was destroyed. They sent a cleaning company to try to clean the smell of smoke from the rooms it had reached and log what they had done.

They then sent in the builders who sent us to choose a kitchen which they then refitted, they decorated every room which had received smoke damage. They also replaced flooring in both the kitchen and hallway as it had been damaged, replacing not just the damaged carpet but all through the stairs and landing so it matched.

We had to go through the inventory and find a price for everything that we had lost, we then submitted it to them for approval and then transferred us the money to buy more.

I couldn't praise them highly enough.

Further to above:
They would have provided temporary accommodation but due to the layout of our house the temporary kitchen was the best solution for us as bedrooms were unaffected and ds1 and ds2 were about to start gcse and a levels.

Be aware though, despite not being in the house, I still suffered from some mental health issues and dh needed therapy. The dc were ok though. But do be kind to yourself.

@L1ttledrummergirl thank you so much that's really helpful.