Indemnity insurance.... not worth the paper it's written on??

[Tillymintsmama]

My solicitor has advised me to get this to 'cover' for lack of building regs certification for stuff that was done before I even moved into my house.

On reading the policy she suggests I pay £53 for, it appears the only 'cover' that is provided is if the local authority decides to take action. Hence, I think this so unlikely that it's not worth the paper it's written on. Am I wrong?

Someone is making a fortune out of providing these meaningless policies!

If you are selling the buyers' solicitor is likely to require it or you apply for buildings regs retrospectively which can take time and may involve more cost to bring it up to current regulation standards. Did you not have same issue when you bought?

No, this issue didn't come up. So I guess their solicitor is asking different enquiry questions to what mine did!

We had to do this when we bought and then subsequently sold our house for work we had not done. It was about £30 and we couldn't proceed without it.

Mortgage companies insist on it.

But yes an insurance policy with cover for £00000's with a premium of £53 is clearly very low risk.

It's a small price for a huge payout. If something happened and the local authority did get involved, then court and demolition/rebuilding fees would be really high. That fee probably covers the admin of taking it out plus a little extra.

I got asked to provide indemnity insurance as there was a covenant that my solicitor wasn't able to ascertain eg it was probably a 'you can't store pigs in your yard' in the 1850s. I refused to pay for it and we proceeded anyway. I wasn't coughing up for something when nobody even knew what it was.