Insurers refusing subsidence claim - please help!

[CaptainMorgansMistress]

If anyone might be able to give any advice, I would be so grateful.

The basic issue is as follows:

• a couple of years after we bought our house, we noticed cracking which has been confirmed as being caused by subsidence as a result of a nearby willow tree.
• the insurers commissioned a loss adjuster to investigate and it turns out that when the builder calculated the required depth of the foundations (taking into account the proximity of the willow), they wrongly calculated them based on the actual height of the tree, rather than the possible eventual full height (which is what your supposed to do apparently).
• building regs signed off and certified the work, including the foundation depth (obviously wrongly?)
• when we purchased the house, all required certificates were there and our solicitor was satisfied all was fine.
• the willow tree has subsequently been cut down by our neighbour.
• the insurers say they won't cover our claim because it is as a result of poor original construction.

So we'll appeal the decision and then I suppose contact the ombudsman. Does anyone think we have a good case? And any advice for how to push through it?
It all feels a bit overwhelming and stressful at the moment

No one really knows why the claim has been refused. If the house owner took out a policy in good faith and believed the extension was designed properly via signing off at the Council, why will the insurance not pay? They are being difficult. Chartered Engineer could be anything from highways, civil or structural and many more! I would still say a decent Structural Engineer who spends their time sorting out insurance companies is your first step. My DH (FStructE) has the authority to get claims sorted without recourse to solicitors in many cases. Ask what track record your Structural Engineer has in this field. Designing and facing down bullshitting insurance companies are two different jobs. DH rarely gets involved with previous builders - they often don't know the time of day either. Can you tell us why the insurance company is saying you are not covered? Normally faulty foundations are a cause of a claim but the insurer pays out because it is not the fault of the policy holder. You do not need anyone else involved at the moment. Save your money for later.

As the NHBC tables give data for high / medium / low shrinkage potential soils and varying d/h ratios you can still make an estimate based on limited data though.

Given that we know it's a willow, so mature height likely to be 16 to 24m, and strip footings are at 1.2m depth then you can make a stab at whether it's adequate or not for each of the three scenarios if you know how far away the willow was from the extension.

I.e., if the willow was 10m away then from the NHBC tables in all three soil cases for a mature height between 16 and 24 m then 1.2m was not adequate and 1.6 m would be the minimum depth required.

Although if it's 15m away then you would need to know height of mature tree and soil type, hence asking for tree height and the distance.

That's from the 2010 NHBC tables, my earlier reference stuff is still packed away somewhere so I'm not sure if that has changed from the guidance in place when the extension was built.

Glasgow doesn't have highly plastic clays so footings there are bound to be shallower than in London Clay - Scotland generally tends to not to have shrinkable clays, which makes things more straightforward (unless you have peat instead).

Except that the OP said that the design fault the insurers have picked up on is that they used current height rather than mature height, and there was only 2m difference. It really is fine margins and guessing stuff isn't going to help. (Though it does raise the question of if it is so close can they really say that it is a due to bad design.) And the London versus Glasgow is because for every 50 miles from the southeast you can go 50mm shallower - it's nothing to do with the soil shrinkability but because of the climate.

2m difference on mature tree height isn't going to make much difference, I'm more interested in finding out where the 1.2m footing depth comes from.

Aa the Glasgow climate is mild and also wetter than London I'm finding the climate thing hard to reconcile - I've worked all across the UK and have never heard that cited as a rule of thumb. Plenty of pockets of shrinkable soils several hundred miles away from London for instance, so I'd always be basing design on site data.

It's straight out of the NHBC Count. Like I say I've been looking at it today. The climate is more to do with the chance of having prolonged dry periods which is when you tend to get the worst subsidence. And it's not instead of assessing the shrinkability of the soil, it is in addition to it.

You're right - the climate reduction is relatively new (when I was doing routine foundation design it was still off BRE 298), but having been inducted into full on belt and braces foundation design I'd be really wary of applying that to highly shrinkable soils. It only takes another summer like 1976 to really throw a spanner in the works.

The design fault is not the fault of the insured OP. None of your discussion on design is relevant to her claim and it has been unjustly refused. She insured against damage to her house and she has not caused it. Usually that is good enough for the insurers to pay. My aunt had exactly the same. No problems at all. No invilvemrnt of the builder, the neighbour's or anyone else. It was just underpinned. OP just needs to get a decent Engineer to fight for her and take issue with the loss adjuster and agree the underpinning. Of course it is now minus the willow!

I agree bojo that the detailed design is a bit of a side issue, unless it can be shown that it was designed correctly in which case the insurer really has no get out. And I'm sure your husband is very good but I'm a bit unsure why you think engineers are the ones to help if the technical aspects are not in dispute. It is a legal question about what is deemed to be a design fault and whether that is a good enough reason to decline the claim.

On the plus side, if the ground was shrinking because of the tree and it has now been removed, you may see it swelling up again, so it may not be as much of a problem (as long as it doesn't swell too much!)

The design has little to do with it in the end. The house is subsiding. That is the claim. The inusrance company really has no get out! They are trying it on It is not the fault of the insured that this has happened. Who did what does not matter, and the Council signed it off. Therefore the Engineer should just prove it needs work doing, not who designed what and when. In older houses no-one knows, do they? So do you think that insureres never pay out in those circumstances? Of course they do. They just might need presuading. Insurance is taken out to cover eventualities like this. It is wrong that insurers procrastinate, get technical with the insured, avoid their obligations and tell the insured it is a legal question. It is not. For the insured it is a question of whether this insurance covered subsiding or not. If the house is deemed to have subsided, the insurance has to pay, irrespesctive of previous design that was not comisioned by the insured. Otherwise no-one would ever get paid out, would they?

Yes, DH is very good. That's why he's in demand!

Bojo - I'm an insurance solicitor. You're wrong. Coverage disputes ARE a legal question. You haven't read the policy, the proposal form, the schedule, don't know the conditions / exclusions or anything else. It could well be a claim that ought to be paid but you aren't in a position to comment at all.

Neither are you! You haven't read them either! As usual the law gets involved before ALL other avenues have been explored. It is perfectly possible to settle with the insurers without lawyers. It happens in many cases. You are blowing this out of proportion and you are giving advice that is not yet required. It may be, but not yet. Who takes the loss adjusters word for it without further investigation? It may not even be subsidence! It could be a fault regarding how the old and new buildings are joined. You have no idea if this is the problem.

Hi I know this is an old post but I found out on New Years Eve at 4.30 our claim also rejected!!!
Just wondering if you got any where fighting your claim?

Hello
I don’t suppose you could send me your DH’s contact details? We are also having issues and I need an expert on side! Thank you!

Hi There,
just interested to know if you have managed to move the claim forward with the NHBC.
I am a structural engineer and involved in a complex claim against the NHBC.
It sounds like the claim is certainly valid. what you need to do is get them to write to you with their resoling as to why the claim has no merit.