Council caused subsidence & property damage

[NC75456]

Hello, looking for some advice, will try and keep this brief!

Our house is near a mature tree on council property. We contacted the council over 20 months ago because we believed roots from this tree were causing subsidence and damage to our external brickwork. Finally, over 20 months later, they have inspected and agreed, and are removing the tree.

We've now realised the extent of the damage to our property: lots of external cracking, the floor outside our exterior wall is completely sunk and you can see the line where it used to be on the bricks, and the floor inside our porch has dropped.

The council are unbearable to deal with and no one seems to be able to help us, we are passed from department to department. It took them over 18 months and multiple requests before they even came to look at the damage in the first instance, which is when they saw the extent of the damage and agreed to remove the tree.

They have told us to contact our insurance and the council insurance, and to get our insurance to do a structural assessment and then contact their insurance.

So I have 2 questions:

1. We don't want to go through our insurance and would rather pay for a survey/structural assessment ourselves and then pass this on to the council. Does anyone know if the council will accept this or is there some rule that it has to be through our insurance?

I will query this with them of course but just wondered if anyone had any insight.

1. The state of our estate is dire, it has been left in a complete state of decline and neglect. There has been no regular upkeep with anything from the council and our estate has basically been left to rot, and I can't help but think this has exacerbated the situation and that it should have been picked up on earlier (the subsidence extends way beyond our property and onto the public paths - my previous complaints in the past 18 months included dangerous subsidence on public paths and still the cases were closed with no further action)

Can I hold the council to account for this in any way?

Thanks a lot in advance for your help. We are losing a lot of sleep over this so just wanted to get some advice if possible before I start another week of trying to get it sorted.

You have my utmost sympathy @NC75456.

Unfortunately, I can't answer this one for you but we are in a similar, though not exactly the same, position ie. our house has signs of subsidence due to water company's non-maintenance of their sewage pipe.

We had a structural engineer visit, at our own behest and cost, and he advised contacting house insurers and pass on to them.

This wasn't really what we wanted either but, the trouble is, going forward, we would have to declare the signs of subsidence to our/any insurers so basically we're damned if we do or damned if we don't.

We've gone down the home insurance route and have their surveyor coming to assess tomorrow.

I'm steeling myself for a "pass the buck" situation, where no-one will help in a practical way, but we'll have to pay a fortune in premiums in future.

I can sympathise with the lack of sleep feature of all this sh*t.

There is no legal requirement that you have insurance for your house. If someone doesn't have insurance that doesn't absolve someone of their liability for damage they're liable for.

If you do have insurance it would be a lot simpler for you to use their services to resolve this. Do you have any insurance? Why don't you want to use it?

Your house insurance company needs to be dealing with this on your behalf.

Yeah, this will be declarable to your insurance company anyway so you may as well get them involved to deal with the council and save your sanity at the same time.

Why are you trying to avoid your insurance company? You pay them to deal with this, and you pay them to be on your side and on your corner against the council's insurers.

You don't think you can get this dealt with and pretend to your insurers it hasn't happened do you? It's more serious than a knocked wing mirror or a repainted car panel.

This will lead to an increase in your insurance premium, and you'll need to declare it all when you sell the house in the future.

But more pressingly, you urgently need this resolved and I'm assuming you don't want to pay for it to be fixed?

@Wingedharpy you have my sympathies, it's just awful isn't it.

The house is owned by my elderly Dad, he lives alone and doesn't have much money - the house is his only asset. In December his insurance was up for renewal and unbeknownst to us he switched his policy and went with a different provider who was cheaper, out of habit of never having any money and just automatically going for the cheaper option.

We are sick with worry that the insurance will be void because our communications about this issue with the council started 18 months ago and he didn't mention it when he signed up for the new insurance.

We didn't notice the extent of the damage/subsidence until this year (after he switched insurance) and the majority of our communications with the council have been to get the tree removed and highlighting damage to the public path/drains, with mention of cracks on our external brickwork and the neighbours. We didn't notice the severity of the damage to our property or the damage internally until a week or so ago.

I am just terrified that the council will declare our earliest communications and the insurance will be void? Of course if it was my policy I would never have changed it, but it's out of my hands and there is nothing I can do now.

I can help with the bit about changing insurers OP - thanks to the multitude of stuff I've read lately.

In our case, cracks noted approx September - new insurers started August.
When house insurers did make contact, I had to give them details of previous insurers who covered house from 2019 - 2020.
Also had to supply policy numbers.
My understanding is that there is a sort of code of conduct thing whereby insurers share liability for claim depending on time scale of claim being lodged.
The main thing is that he wasn't aware that he was subsiding when he took out the policy.

Frankly, even if thr insurance is void, you'll be in the same position as you are now, surely?

Do any of his policies have legal cover for some advice?

@Wingedharpy I am not an insurance expert but I strongly suspect that your previous insurance company will cover this. The event came to light whilst the house was insured with them so it's down to them to cover it.

Have you thought that because your father didn't declare everything for his current policy then he may actually not be insured now?

I can feel why you are worried. You really should get some professional advice on this so you know where you stand. It would be money worth spending.

My gut feeling is you'll be OK, but you need to make sure you are covered now even if this means cancelling your current policy and taking out a new one.

Financial services/insurers are heavily regulated towards vulnerable customers like your dad, and treating them fairly. Make sure they know he's elderly and declare any medical conditions that might have impared him telling them everything.

If his current insurers won't pay up his previous one might, there are particular insurance rules regarding subsidence claims & who pays out.

Had a very similar situation. You need to go through your insurance. They will sort everything for you, and it’s their responsibility to claim it back from the council. Don’t know why you would go through the pain of liaising with them directly, especially now they have accepted liability. You’ll get charged an excess but such scenarios is what insurance is for - it’s more important to get it resolved, the monitoring done to show it’s resolved and the certificates to show it’s been remedied.

Good luck with all. Took me a couple of years to sort in its entirety. Sold it now, and had no issues in doing so as I had all the necessary paperwork.

@TobyHouseMan: with apologies to @NC75456.
Sorry, I wasn't very clear.
New policy started August, 2020.
Cracks first noticed September 2020.

Surely, OP's DDad would struggle to get a new insurer to take him on now that the issue is more clear following the Council's visit?

@Schooldilemma2021 : Can I ask what "monitoring" involved, please?

@Wingedharpy when we had monitoring they put screws in the walls and metal sensors either side of cracks. They then came out to measure them every 6-8 weeks before/during/after work was done to make sure movement stopped.

@Andthenanothercupoftea : Thank you. That sounds painless enough.

Another question, again with apologies to OP, for those of you who have been through this, can you give us an idea of the effect on your house insurance premiums after.
I fully appreciate that it will rise, but by how much, roughly?
10's, 100's or 1,000's of pounds?

@Wingedharpy it involved instruments being put in the wall in various places and they would come back periodically to look at these, and could tell from the measurement on these whether the property was stable and had no further movement, or whether it was still moving. This phase from memory was for about 12 months after the trees had been removed. The insurance company require the monitoring to be carried out and confirmation by way of a report confirming the property is stable before doing the remedial work, as they won’t want to fix everything till they know that whatever remedy action taken has actually worked .

It was very stressful at the time but looking back it was a fairly straight forward process, but it was my first insurance claim on my first ever property purchase, and could not help freaking out due to the nature of the problem. Once the trees had been removed, felt more relieved and knew it was just a matter of working through the process.

[quote Wingedharpy]@Andthenanothercupoftea : Thank you. That sounds painless enough.

Another question, again with apologies to OP, for those of you who have been through this, can you give us an idea of the effect on your house insurance premiums after.
I fully appreciate that it will rise, but by how much, roughly?
10's, 100's or 1,000's of pounds?[/quote]
Can anybody help with this please? How much did your premiums go up by, roughly?