Huge cracks in walls

[LucyPowell77]

I'm looking for some advice on how to proceed with the situation I find myself in. There are cracks appearing all the wall and ceiling in my house. A few months ago I reported the cracks to my insurance company as possible subsidence. Based on the photos have sent to my insurance company they have ruled out subsidence. They have said the cracks are just cosmetic and to hire someone to repair the cracks myself. I really wish I could believe them, but the existing cracks keep getting bigger and new crack keep appearing. Today I put a tape measure in the biggest crack to see deep in went and it was 24 cm deep.
I can understand why the insurance say its not subsidence. There are no external cracks and most of the cracks are upstairs along the wall that joins to next doors. While it probably isn’t subsidence, I still think it is structural. Worst crack is now so wide that I can see that the bricks behind the plaster are also cracked.

I suspect the cracks are something to do with the renovation work my neighbours did a couple of years ago. My old neighbour died. He had not done any modernising to his home for a long time, so it probably needed a lot of work to bring it up to a modern standard. The new owners did a back to brick renovation along with putting a whole new roof on. The roofing work caused me a lot of issues at the time and I did raise my concerns with the roofer. The roofer did not like being questioned and became quite threatening towards me. Unfortunately, the roofer was a relation of the women who owns the house and that relationship turned sour too. I remember thinking at the time it was the strangest renovation I have ever seen. Other than the roofer no proper trades people worked on the house. The owner’s ‘contractor’ moved into house for about a year and did the rest of the work himself. I received no notice any work was going to done and no party wall agreement was issued. I am not a 100% sure if I should have received one or not. I don’t know if they should have issued one for the roof replacement. I suspect they may have removed an internal wall upstairs. The house used to be 3 bedrooms, but when it was rented out it was listed as 2 bedrooms. The cracks on walls are inline with what you would expect from a house suffering from roof spread. My house is a Victorian terrace and from what I understand they were only built to hold the weight of a traditional slate roof. I know my neighbours changed their roof from slate to something else, but I don’t know enough about roofing to identify what tiles they are. If the new tiles are heavier, they could have caused roof spread. I know they did not get any form of approval from the council for any of the work they had done. Also, I’ve noticed I seem to be able to hear a lot of what the tenants living next door are doing. I never heard the guy make a sound when he lived there.

So now I found myself in a situation where I have some very big very concerning cracks on my walls and ceiling, but my home insurance company are not interested at all. I suspect that it has something to do with work my neighbours have had done, but I’m not an expect so I could be wrong. I haven’t done any renovation or building work myself that could have caused structural issues. The situation is very stressful. The cracks on the ceiling in the smaller bedroom are now so bad that I am really concerned about how safe it is for my family to sleep in there. I feel out of my depth with this. My house feels unsafe, but it might be overreacting. The relationship with my neighbour is broken to the point we can’t have a friendly chat about this. If the issue is coming from her side than I would probably have to go down the legal route to recover costs. While I can’t ignore the damage I am scared of taking legal action against my neighbour. I fear there would be a backlash against me and things could get nasty. I need to establish for certain what’s causing the cracks. I thought my insurance company would at least send an accessor out to look at my house and tell me what the cause is, but they have refused to do that. A local surveyor has quoted me £1300 to assess my house and write a report for me. I can’t afford to spend that much, but I desperately need answers. Maybe I’m being suborn but I don’t think I should have to pay for a surveyor.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? How did you get it resolved?

A friend of mine recently had a structural survey done on a house she was thinking of buying. Apparently, a chimney stack had been removed and the entire wall was at risk of falling down!

Bloody hell, OP! Those cracks are horrific and Admiral's attitude just stinks - I'm another one who certainly won't consider them now for insurance.

Hopefully you'll hear back very soon from the Council and they'll take swift action, and put a rocket up Admiral's arse!

I'm glad you're getting some traction and I hope you don't have to spend money to get to the bottom of this.

With kindness:

I have a boyfriend. I love him to bits, but unfortunately, he has not been a great support with this. He thinks I should just accept what the insurance company have told me. He says they are the experts at this stuff, if they say it’s just cosmetic they must be right.

My OH knows that if he made such a blanket statement with no evidentiary backup, I'd wipe the bloody floor with him for lack of respect. Gut instincts exist for a reason: your unconscious mind learns to assess and log perceived risks over a long period of time and brings it to the forefront of your mind as a nagging concern when something's just not right.

Trust your gut.

IMO, the insurance industry are about as slippery as estate agents, and the Admiral Group (one branch of which includes home insurance) posted a 90% increase in profits in 2024. In fact, they were so pleased with themselves that they handed £3.6k bonuses to 13,000 members of staff. What other industry do you know of that has had the finances to do that in a post-Covid, desperately trying to recover economy?

I'm not a builder/surveyor/etc and have zero knowledge with buildings I'm as much of a layperson as you can get but fucking hell OP even i can see that crack isn't cosmetic or whatever bullshit they are trying to fob you off with! I'm glad the council are going to call you back and I would keep raising merry hell with Admiral and submit claims/complaints left right and centre. Get those pics up on their social media for the world to see and shame them into doing what you are paying your premiums for

I sincerely hope you get this resolved as quickly and safely as possible

I've just flipped through my Victorian House manual, roof spread and subsidence sections, and found the cracks I think most resemble yours.

So, as well as chimneys, roofs and walls, floors also need to be taken into account because the joists can be shared. See pic.

Hang fire for the council OP, don't hire anyone else yet. In all likelihood the cause of the problem is next door, and may have been plastered over or boxed in.

A surveyor hired by you won't have any right of access to next door, whereas the council can gain access and insist on plaster / boxing being removed for inspection, they can then enforce remedial actions as needed.

An engineers survey should be about £1000 to - £1500 (maybe more in places like London).

You will want an actual engineer though to asses the structure, be careful as some survey company deliberately make it sound like they are structural engineers by calling things 'structural surveys' etc... but they are not and just doing a standard RICS survey which will be no use.

When Building Control call you back, ask for an email address/contact name and send them some of those scary photos. They will definitely be interested. Emphasise that you are concerned your house (and theirs) is unsafe. Hope you get someone to come out soon!

Sorry if missed,but why does that close up crack have mesh in it?
Suggests it cracked before
.

I agree with that.

Insurers (and their third parties) will try to fob you off at the first instance, you have to insist they send a professional around - it does help if you have a report that confirms subsidence though.

Start with any builder you can get your hands on frankly! There are some good sites which compare them, they have reviews etc. or ask friends locally who have used builders. I think genuinley... most builders are nice and if you said you had an emergency to look at most would come soon mainly because they are nice and also because they I think weirdly quite enjoy seeing bad work if that makes sense....

Yeah for a full structural survey... likely in £1000-£1500 mark. Few ways to get a good one! Ideally can send some photos to them before too.. so that they know it is urgent to get to

Agree with this.

Ask the council to come out especially as it could be a health and safety risk.

Also ring Admiral and tell them that the council said that they should send someone out to look at it.

This is very good advice.

If the house next door has had major building work/changes to internal structure, and cracks appeared over that time, it's definitely the main suspect. The exceptionally dry weather might have caused a bit of ground shrinkage (if you live in London/SE England) but I doubt such severe cracks would have developed so quickly due to that alone. Building Control first, then depending on what they find, maybe go back to insurers.

It is literally his job to deter you from making a claim.

Insurance companies will happily take as much of their customers' money as possible, and then do their utmost to avoid having to pay any of it out again. I know this - I used to work for an insurance broker.

A house the age of yours would undoubtedly have long-established and slow moving settlement cracks, developed over many years. Any new ones and/or a sudden increase in cracks is definitely of concern.

You might have to approach the ombudsman.

I’m a building engineer and those cracks look like significant movement to me. Get a charted structural engineer (MIStructE) to assess asap.

…or you can call building control. Use the phrase ‘dangerous structure’ and they will respond as an emergency’ and probably take the consultant structural engineer with them.

@BrickBiscuit The engineer costs won’t be covered. However depends what the bill is for repairing the house if the insurer won’t cough up. If it’s vast amounts when do you give up. Insurers can be very difficult and it’s outrageous they didn’t send anyone out.

@FestivusMiracle No they won’t because they won’t pay and they don’t employ any! As if………. The house owner needs their own to advocate for them.

I would agree with that.

My dad was in Building Control for 40 odd years and the words “dangerous structure” would get him in the car sharpish.

Other word that got him going was “mineshaft”. He loved a good mineshaft and where he worked it was quite a regular thing.

@putitovertherefornowHmm. Ombudsman! How long have you got. They agree with you and then let the insurers have another go at trying to say they aren’t liable! DH dealing with exactly this right now. What does anyone expect building control to actually do? The LA can take legal action but do they? DH finds they don’t. Unsafe structures are not made safe because they are unbelievably slow. In theory they should have a field day with this but I will be interested to see what they do and how quickly.

Any update op

We had a structural engineer out to a house I’m buying - paid him £660 yesterday.

A structural engineer / surveyor / builder is of no use here, the OP has done the right thing contacting building control.

You could hire the best, most qualified expert, but if next door refuse to engage they can only make an educated guess and offer no solution.

The LABC officer has the right to access next door, the right to cut inspection holes in their building fabric to inspect that side and the right to enforce repair works, which likely need doing in next doors house to correct the issue.

The OP is following the correct procedure at this stage of the game - if the inspector thinks there is a serious risk they will move very fast to get things moving.