UK Construction and Law

A subsidence claim on a listed house fails because nothing was ever notified within the meaning of the policy

By Staff Writer  |  28 August 2026

The Technology and Construction Court dismissed a claim on a household policy over a Grade II listed property near Bedford. An insurer's email saying there were no underwriting issues was held to mean only that cover was not being avoided. Had liability been established, damages would have been nominal.

The property is a Grade II listed house dating from about 1750, with a Victorian eastern extension and a western extension and garage block added in about the 1980s. It had a history of ground movement long before the policy in question. There had been subsidence in about 2003, a claim on an earlier insurer settled in January 2015 for about 200,000 pounds, and underpinning works carried out with money from that settlement. The owner then complained that the underpinning had itself moved the Victorian wing and the garage block, and pursued the contractor, recovering a further 50,000 pounds in 2020 and 150,000 pounds in 2021.

The policy at the centre of the case was taken out online in August 2017 and ran for a year. It carried buildings cover of 1,000,000 pounds. The declared value for the property was 533,000 pounds. The claim was notified in July 2018 and described an eight foot crack mirrored inside and outside, with the garage said to be the only area affected.

Notification decides it

The claim came apart at the threshold question. The court's answer was that the claimant did not notify any damage within the meaning of the policy in 2018 or at all. That is the finding practitioners should take from the case. A history of movement recorded in monitoring reports, correspondence with contractors and a previous insurer's file does not become a notification to this insurer under this policy, and the fact that the property was plainly moving does not supply the notice the wording requires.

The second point of construction concerned an email sent by the underwriting agency in June 2019 confirming there were no underwriting issues. The claimant read it as an admission of liability. The court did not. Its meaning and effect were that the insurers were not seeking to avoid the policy, and nothing more. The claimant still had to establish that subsidence as defined had occurred, that it had occurred to the western extension and garage block, and that it had occurred within the policy period. To read the email any other way would make it an admission of liability for any insured peril, to any part of the property, at any time.

Quantum would have failed too

The claim was pleaded at over 553,000 pounds plus VAT for remedial works, with further sums for alternative accommodation and for interest on sale proceeds said to have been lost. The quotation relied on covered a much wider scope of underpinning than the western extension and garage block, and an attempt was made in evidence to estimate the narrower scope on a back of the envelope basis.

This is not a case where the court should do the best that it could: there are simply too many imponderables to arrive at any satisfactory assessment of damages.

Adrian Williamson KC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court

Had liability been established, the award would have been nominal damages only. Two further findings are useful. The rebuild cost at inception was found to be 1,615,000 pounds against automatic cover of 1,000,000, on expert evidence that used published cost data for the correct county at the correct date with an uplift for the listed nature of the building, and rejected an opposing figure that used a professional fees allowance the witness could not justify and an area he had agreed was wrong but had not recalculated. And a second buildings policy covering subsidence was in force for part of the period, engaging the clause under which the insurer pays only its share.

A procedural trap worth noting

Late in the trial the insurers put to the claimant that several disclosed documents were not genuine. That ran into CPR 32.19, under which a party is deemed to admit the authenticity of a disclosed document unless notice to prove is served by the latest date for serving witness statements, or within seven days of disclosure, whichever is later. An application for relief from sanctions followed, and permission to extend time was refused for two of the four documents. Anyone who intends to challenge the authenticity of a document at trial has to serve that notice in time, and finding the problem in cross examination is too late.

The court also recorded findings of sustained dishonesty on the claimant's part and left it to the insurers to decide whether to take that further.