Neighbour 'lying' on high-value insurance claim - at my expense?

[Leakybusiness]

A couple of years ago my neighbour told me she could hear hissing water in her house....she said at the time that she'd already been hearing for it 2 years at that point but that it had recently got louder. I chased up with her a week or so later and she said she would continue investigating it (call water board etc.) the following week.
It now transpires she didn't do anything. As she never mentioned it again (and I see her frequently) I assumed any issues had been ruled out.

Earlier this year I noticed tiles lifting in my kitchen and various other issues...had damp survery which recommended a leak survey. No leaks found at mine but a high pressure mains water leak was traced to my neighbours (none of us are on water metres, just a set rate, otherwise I'm sure she would have taken action earlier). We have a shared water supply but the leak is after the supply branches off to serve her house only.

When the leak was found I asked my neighbour if she'd called a plumber when she first heard the hissing and she told me she hadn't as worried about the cost...I might have had some sympathy but she's spent 10's of thousands on cosmetic work for her house in the last few years.

My house has suffered a lot of damage under the floors, much of which was concealed....a shared drainage channel runs behind our houses right next to the leak site and my house being slightly downhill, it looks like the escaped water has happily taken this route. It also looks like the house on the other side of me may have suffered some damage.

In order not to 'drip feed' (I can't even smile at my sad pun) when the leak was found, a secondary leak was also discovered in her garden....this one on her grey waste pipe, again near the shared drainage channel. Neighbour has informed me that her private loss assessor has told not to mention this second leak to her insurers or to get it fixed before they look at the site (something about them noticing disturbed ground) and not covering the second type of leak. I've asked her to get the second leak fixed but she is refusing saying it will 'complicate' her insurance claim and I'll have to wait until after her loss adjuster visits and she's get it fixed then...she's being quite forceful about this.

Obviously, if I'm asked by my insurer (who is visiting soon) I'll have to disclose what she told me....but I just wondering whether, if she's seen as negligent, it might impact my own claim. I can't afford to pay for the damage to my house myself and it's so bad I'm worried about going into negative equity if its not fixed. The mains leak was a couple of feet underground and noted as a mechanical failure...I had no way of knowing it was happening as it was concealed in someone else's garden deep under a patio. I've read (and hope its the case) that insurers shouldn't refuse a claim on the grounds of the damage being 'gradual' if the damage was concealed from the policy holder.

Also, I don't know if there is anyone out there with knowledge of insurance but it seems extremely bad practice for my neighbour's assessor to tell her not to disclose the second leak, especially as it's still not fixed and involves grey water....or is this 'normal'

Disclose it to your insurer - she’s recklessly negligent and it’s causing damage and disruption to your house. You don’t need to be friendly - let the insurers do their job.

OP, you should disclose it to your insurer whether they ask or not, because if they subsequently find out that you knew, it may impact your claim. I can’t believe that a “private loss assessor” has told her not to mention it to her insurers, as this is illegal - there are professional codes of conduct they have ti follow. “Withholding, hiding, or falsifying information can lead to the refusal of a claim, cancellation of the insurance policy, or accusations of fraud.”

Tell your insurer. Hopefully they'll pursue her insurer.

You MUST be honest with YOUR insurer as this could negatively affect your claim. Imagine if they say, sorry we cannot pay for your repairs!
Can you afford the repairs if they say no?

I uploaded an update to my claims portal saying my neighbour had a second leak....mainly because I was worried about failure to disclose, but not gone into detail.
My neighhour seems to think disclosing the 2nd leak will impact all our claims ....shes put me in a difficult position ...if she doesnt intend telling her insurers, i cannot fathom why she told me about it..let alone by text. She seems to think the grey water leak cant have reached my house..only her mains leak.

She was also badgering me to use the same loss assessor as herself. Im glad i opted not to.

Your claim and her claim are completely separate.

You must make your ow claim, for your own damage, to your own insurer. Play it 100% straight and honest, full information. You can’t risk your claim failing when you have done nothing wrong.

Your insurers will most likely try and recoup their costs from her insurers, but none of that is nothing to do with you. Nothing that happens at her house or with her claim is anything to do with you.

(We had a massive claim some years ago which impacted our neighbours. It was awful. Our insurers were brilliant with us but ruthless with everyone else unfortunately. We just did what we had to do and had to resist pressure from everyone else to help them out, lie, change things etc.)

The only way any of this affects your claim is that it shows she has been negligent and so your insurer has a claim against her. Neither of the leaks was on your land so you have not been negligent, so the only thing that could negatively impact your claim is if you failed to disclose the information. Either she is not very bright or she is trying to minimise her loss by hiding information from her insurers and frighten you into doing the same.

Don't the insurance company send their own loss assessor? That's what happened to me when a workman left my central heating with a leak that wrecked a bedroom.

@Leakybusiness it occurs to me that her assessor may have given her that advice to benefit the insurers and not your neighbour. I mean why would an assessor be bothered about what happens to the customer of an insurance company?

Ive found this quite confusing as ive not made a claim before but in my neighbours case her Loss Assessor is a person/firm engaged by her to assist her with her claim (she has some damage too apparently) they make their money on a 'no win no fee' basis and try and get her the best possible payout from her insurers...the Loss Adjuster is sent by her insurers to evaluate her claim.

oh ok, I got my terms wrong! I have made a few, not many, insurance claims over quite a few years and have only ever dealt directly with the insurance company. I wonder how he gets paid? The insurance company surely won't cover his fee so I guess it gets taken out of the company's payment to her....which again makes no sense because surely they (insurance) will only pay out enought to cover her losses? I think you are sensible to stay well clear!

She’ll have hired an independent loss assessor because it’s going to be a complicated claim, polices usually exclude damage caused by failure to maintain and gradual exposure leading to deterioration / development of damage. Her loss assessor is there to assess the cause of the damage and put forward a robust case for it being in scope of the policy because the concealed slow leak couldn’t have been identified or addressed sooner. She’ll need to find a way to pay him if he builds a successful case - but a loss assessor can be the difference between having a claim paid to the full policy limits and it being settled for a low sum or completely denied, so often worth engaging in complex issues like this.

thanks for that, everyday is a school day :)

You (and they) each have a duty of ‘utmost good faith’ (uberrimae fides) to your respective insurers - you have to tell them everything you know relevant to the claim or it could affect the settlement of your claim.

If that disadvantages your neighbour that is their issue, not yours, particularly if they are not being straightforward with their insurer.

I've looked back at the updates I made to my claims portal and see that I did mention there might be a second leak when the neighbour told me...at the time I was worried about 'failure to mitigate damage.' I think that's why it's important to be truthful...because it's easy to get tangled up and forget what's been said. The portal doesn't allow policy-holders to log in and look at the history of the claim / updates they've made, I wonder if this is intentional. I was only able to check because I'd saved the updates I uploaded.

I would have hoped that because I've been honest throughout, I'd get a fair outcome...but the more I learn about insurance claims and how it seems almost normal to bend to the truth, the more I think it's a matter of playing the game and I'll end up with huge losses as a result of being transparent. Not only has the neighbour informed me that her loss assessor advised her not to disclose the second leak, but that the leak detection engineer (who recommended the assessor to her in the first place) purposefully left the second leak off his report about her property. I feel like reporting both of them. The neighbour assures me the second grey water leak won't reach my house, only the primary leak, but she's not a plumber...and they've just left the second leak unfixed, discharging into the ground near the old drainage channel that directed the water from the first leak my way.

I'm over £1500 down already - I had a damp survey when I noticed tiles lifting, followed by a leak detection report that ruled out leaks at my house but traced them to hers. Once the leak detection man transferred his attention to the neighbour's house, she paid him (through her trace and access cover, I think) so the reports are separate.

I'm worried that if my/her insurers decide my neighbour has been negligent or that damage from the grey water isn't covered, that they'll simply tell me to sue her rather than help me.

IME your insurance covers you, so they will pay out as long as YOU have not been dishonest or negligent.

They may then try and recover their costs from the neighbour if they think there is a case to be made.

(Our insurers paid out over £100k and took care of all our issues….. and then took the at fault tradesman to court to recover as much as they could. We weren’t involved at all.)

Your insurer cannot penalise you for your neighbour's dishonesty. You are doing the right thing by telling them everything. I would tell them that your neighbour has informed you that there is a second leak and that she has not informed her insurers of this.

Failure to mitigate damage is not about your neighbour. It is about you. If, say, a pipe on your property had burst but you had not turned off the water, leading to further water damage, you would have failed to mitigate damage, as a result of which your insurer would have paid for the initial damage but not for any damage that would have been avoided had you turned the water off. In this instance, there is nothing you could have done to mitigate the damage. Your insurer will pay the cost of dealing with the damage (less any excess). They will probably try to reclaim their costs from your neighbour.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply - your responses have made me feel much better!