Anyone with experience of subsidence claim

[MenopausalMrs]

Hi, looking for any recent experiences of subsidence claims... long story short - my house has confirmed subsidence, the cause was identified as clay shrinkage due to trees close to the property (all trees have been removed apart from one on neighbours property which they have been asked to remove), the insurance company also wants to investigate the drains.

The insurance company say they will continue to monitor to confirm stability and then arrange for a cash settlement to enable a local contractor to carry out any necessary repairs works.

I was wondering any anyone can tell me in their experience how long the entire process took and how the cash settlement works. Additionally, what internal repairs did you undertake? I have mainly cracks above doorframes, in walls and flooring seems to have 'dropped'.

I need to sell the property once it is rectified as part of a divorce settlement, which is obviously on hold at the moment because of this. My ex husband is becoming increasingly frustrated with how long it is taking for him to get his share of the equity. This is the family home (2 x DC) which I am paying all bills etc for so he is just waiting for his equity to be able to purchase his own property.

Sorry for the ramble!

Hello! We had very similar with the trees etc.

Suspected by builders in early 2019 and reported to the insurance company.

We've only just had the last of the repairs done (one back door pending). So start to finish it will be 2 years 3 months.

However they stopped coming for monitoring throughout the first lockdown, which delayed things by 6+ months, and they couldn't find the owner of the trees they needed to cut down. Plus we weren't on it with chasing them - I think if we had been more proactive it may have been resolved slightly quicker, so keep calling - insurers, loss adjusters and any builders - they'll all blame each other for delays.

Following the trees being cut down it should have been 6 months of monitoring before they do the repairs. They may need to do further monitoring after any repairs to the drains.

As for repairs, this was all carried out by a subcontractor of the insurance company. Basically once they had confirmed the movement had stopped, they sent out the loss adjusters and builders to agree the works to be carried out and there was some back and forth on this (not much)

The repairs needed were mainly cosmetic - filling cracks in the plaster (inside) and render (outside). The only structural thing was replacing the back door as we'd had to look a section off the top so it would fit in the frame.

The bonus was we also got all the rooms with cracks in repainted and the whole outside of the house repainted.

A bit of a ramble, possibly not in the most useful order...

It's not quick. Family dealt with one recently, took over a year. They need to monitor it for a while, it's not just the work to rectify.

My late DM's house had bad subsidence caused by a large tree in the garden, which we got permission to cut down.
Once she'd paid the £1,000 excess and survey was done it went quite quickly, house was underpinned, all internal and external cracks and doors filled/replaced, new bathroom installed as tiles etc all cracked. General painting and decorating all done, and it took about six months AFAICR. Perhaps a little longer. This was before COVID.
Tip -- house was sold and the new owners were able to insure it by using the same insurance company as she had done. I'm told this is quite standard.

Thanks all for the info :-)

Was 6-9 months of monitoring for us; then repairs arranged by insurance company (this was a detached garage).

@Andthenanothercupoftea

Hello! We had very similar with the trees etc.

Suspected by builders in early 2019 and reported to the insurance company.

We've only just had the last of the repairs done (one back door pending). So start to finish it will be 2 years 3 months.

However they stopped coming for monitoring throughout the first lockdown, which delayed things by 6+ months, and they couldn't find the owner of the trees they needed to cut down. Plus we weren't on it with chasing them - I think if we had been more proactive it may have been resolved slightly quicker, so keep calling - insurers, loss adjusters and any builders - they'll all blame each other for delays.

Following the trees being cut down it should have been 6 months of monitoring before they do the repairs. They may need to do further monitoring after any repairs to the drains.

As for repairs, this was all carried out by a subcontractor of the insurance company. Basically once they had confirmed the movement had stopped, they sent out the loss adjusters and builders to agree the works to be carried out and there was some back and forth on this (not much)

The repairs needed were mainly cosmetic - filling cracks in the plaster (inside) and render (outside). The only structural thing was replacing the back door as we'd had to look a section off the top so it would fit in the frame.

The bonus was we also got all the rooms with cracks in repainted and the whole outside of the house repainted.

A bit of a ramble, possibly not in the most useful order...

We were June 2018 and just finishing now. If I had pushed them more and Covid hadn't happened I think it would have been quite a bit quicker. Generally they will investigate, fix the cause and then monitor for 6 months before making cosmetic repairs - so in theory it could only be a year or so. Keep on at them though; ring every week.

Since mid 2018. Still ongoing. 😟