When Chloe spotted a partial pipework blockage, her home insurer argued that the damage was gradual and so not covered by her policy.
What happened
Chloe noticed that water wasn’t draining away from her house as quickly as it used to. She couldn’t fix the problem herself, so she got in touch with her insurer, which sent a drainage company to inspect the situation.
The drainage company’s report said there was a partial blockage in the pipework and didn’t mention any other problems. Chloe’s insurer told her that this meant her claim wasn’t covered, because there was no physical damage to the pipework.
It said the drainage was still usable because the blockage wasn’t completely stopping water from flowing. It also said the blockage had happened slowly over time and pointed out that ‘gradual damage’ wasn’t covered by her policy.
Chloe thought denying her claim in this situation was unreasonable, so she complained. When she got her insurer’s ‘final response’ letter and still wasn’t happy, she contacted us.
What we said
When we spoke to Chloe, she said she didn’t know there was a problem until a few days before she made the claim. As soon as she’d spotted the issue, she’d put sink unblocker down the pipe. That hadn’t fixed it, so she called her insurer.
The working in Chloe’s policy said that it covered accidental damage to underground pipes, but didn’t define ‘accidental damage’. We thought the insurer should use the usual definition – ‘unforeseen and unintentional damage’. Based on this, we decided the blockage would count.
There were no signs of physical damage to the pipe, but Chloe’s policy didn’t actually require any physical damage for the problem to be covered. And, as the water wasn’t draining away as it should, we thought there was a ‘loss of function’ that would count as damage anyway.
We turned our attention to the policy exclusion for ‘gradual damage’. We did think it was possible that the material causing the blockage had built up over time. But, though the build-up was gradual, the ‘loss of function’ that we counted as damage wasn’t.
We felt confident that Chloe wouldn’t have known about the blockage until there was a noticeable loss of function. We upheld her complaint and agreed that it was unfair for her insurer to reject her claim.