Is Your Home Insured for Subsidence?

Every cloud has a silver lining… but even when the sun is shining it seems every sky still has a cloud.

Yes this summer promises to be one of the best in recent memory after a succession of heavy downpours in the last two years. However, with bright skies, soaring temperatures and less rainfall, comes a heightened risk of subsidence and homeowners should be careful to ensure they are suitably protected within their home insurance policies.

What risk does subsidence pose to home insurance?

According to figures from Halifax home insurance, subsidence has cost the insurance industry around £825million in the last four years alone. Indeed figures from the Association of British Insurers show that the industry has handled 144,000 subsidence claims over the same period.

Although severe cases of subsidence are rare in the UK, homeowners in the South East should be particularly wary as the combination of warmer temperatures and clay based soil heightens their risk.

The chance of subsidence occurring heightens during a hot summer due to the growth of vegetation. As gardens grow more rapidly, they demand more moisture even though the weather is at its driest. Indeed around 70 per cent of claims in the UK are made in areas of shrinkable clay soil. If you’re unsure about the clay content in your soil, then see if it can be rolled into a ball easily – if it can, then it is highly likely to have substantial clay content.

Indeed large areas of the UK are built on clay soil, which tends to shrink as it dries and rehydrates. One sure-fire sign of clay movement is when cracks start to appear in garden flags during the summer months – this is caused by the shrinkage of clay.

Of course this in itself is not necessarily a problem, but when trees and vegetation extract moisture it can also affect the soils on which your home stands. Typical signs that a property is feeling the effects of subsidence include cracks appearing in walls, particularly if they start around the corners of windows or doors.

How can home insurance help battle subsidence?

Thankfully the majority of home insurance providers do offer some form of subsidence cover within their policies. The key is to check your buildings cover and see what protection you have in place.

Check to see if there are any exclusions as to how the subsidence cover applies. For example, an insurer may not offer a payout if you allow a problem to develop over time or if you plant trees too close to a home.

Also pay attention to the level of buildings cover you have in place. Ideally, home insurance should cover the rebuild value of the home – i.e. how much it would cost if it had to be knocked down and built from scratch. This differs from the retail value of a home which also takes into account land and location, as well as property market fluctuations. However, though the rebuild value is less you should be careful not to leave your property underinsured just in case.

Should a subsidence claim be necessary, the home insurance provider is likely to send out a claims assessor to look at the damage to your home and see what work needs to be done.

Can you avoid a home insurance claim for subsidence?

There are steps that can be taken to minimise the risk of subsidence and therefore leave you less likely to make a claim. After all, you don’t want to make a home insurance claim unless totally necessary because one claim is likely to wipe out a no-claims discount, force you to pay your excess/deductible and potentially increase your premiums at renewal time.

Among the steps you can take to protect your home are checking the survey and historical information on mining when buying a home. Make sure there has not been previous mining activity beneath the property as this accounts for a large number of claims. A survey of the drainage of the property can also help to identify the risk caused by water leaking on the soil beneath a property.

Call out the local water authority to check the incoming water mains – around 15 per cent of claims come from water washing away the finer soil on the ground. In addition, pay attention to the trees around your home. It may be that you need to remove a tree or relocate it further away from a property. Some trees are safer than others. An Apple tree for example, can be planted as close as 10m from a property, but a Willow tree would need at least 40m away.

Make sure you check your home insurance policy to ensure it is up to date and that you have suitable cover just in case.