Buildings insurance question

[Linnet]

The buildings insurance on our flat is through a Housing Association, we have no choice in this that is the way it has to be. The HA own the flat upstairs from us, the area out the back of the building is shared between us and the flat upstairs.

If any maintenance on the building needs to be done, i.e if the building needs a new roof we, as owners, have to pay half the costs.

There is a problem out the back at the moment with the drains, we're still waiting on a plumber to come out and look at this and fully expect to be billed for half the costs, which I have no problem with per se as it's what we are expecting to happen.

But, could this be something that I could suggest to the HA should be claimed on the buildings insurance?

Is there anyone who has the same situation of the insurance being through the HA? or Has anyone had any experience of this or something slimilar?

bump

It depends what the problem is - generally housing insurance covers fire and flood and subsidence. If the drain has collapsed because of subsidence then there might be a claim but most policies have an excess of at least £1000 on subsidence so you might not end up saving anything plus your house would be blighted by having suffered from subsidence. It's probably just a blockage in which case you won't be covered.

You could investigate buying share of freehold from the HA which would give you a greater say in which insurance policy was taken out on the building etc.

We have no choice in the buildings insurance, the HA gets block policies and we were told when we bought the flat that the buildings insurance would be through the HA and there was nothing we could do about that, which is fine in itself as it meant we didn't have to hunt around finding buildings insurance as it was already taken care of.

We don't know yet what has happened to the drain as we are still waiting for the plumber, a whole week now we've been waiting, so until they turn up and we can actually talk to them we don't know what has caused the blockage. I'm hoping it's not subsidence, probably just an old pipe that has collapsed.