UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi all
 So the flat above mine developed some sort of leak which brought down part of my ceiling and damaged the kitchen.
 Leak was sourced from flat above.
 I had assumed that the leaseholders insurance of the flat above would be responsible, but that appears not to be the case and the cost of repairing my flat will be born by the Buildings Insurance which is paid for out of the Service charge. But the excess on that policy must be paid for by the leaseholder of the flat responsible for the leak.
 Never having had this happen before can anyone comment on the normality of this?

I was in exactly the same situation a couple of years ago. I ended up going halves on the excess, because the stoner upstairs would otherwise not cough up. Good luck!

Thnks....But what I do not understand is why this has anything to do with the Buildings Insurance that we ALL pay for.
Apart from as you mention, there is no compulsion available to make the responsible leaseholder pay the excess, and in the meantime who actually pays out? Presumably our Buildings insurance or the Service charge account pays it out which then has knock on effect to all innocent leaseholders.
 This is like someone bumping my car in a car park and me claiming from the car park owners insurance

Usually a water leak is just an accident that you are (hopefully) insured against. Some block policies cover this and some don't.

There's no reason to expect the upstairs neighbour to cover any costs at all, although some might out of neighbourliness. If upstairs had been negligent, and you could show that, things might be different.

In your analogy, I'd be surprised if you could claim from a car park operator's insurance if someone hits your car.

Indeed JPK. In the same way I am surprised that a 3rd party insurance (buildings insurance) covers this, as the leak is inside a flat and not in a common area. I had assumed that an issue of this type, originating inside a flat, would be the sole responsibility of that flat (leaseholder or leaseholders insurance) to pay for any damage caused to others.
For example, if there was an issue with bad wiring INSIDE a flat it is the responsibility of that flat to fix it, not to be paid for by the General Service charge building insurance....
Given that the flat above is rented out I can see issues getting the excess paid for by whoever that is.

The people upstairs probably aren't liable for the excess (assuming there is an insurance policy that covers it). If they left a tap running maybe.

So what is the situation if indeed someone left a tap running and a sink overflowed, but the only damage was in the flat where the negligence occurred.?
 

Assuming the person who left the tap running wasn't the owner of the property and owes a duty of care to them, they'd be liable to compensate the owner for the reasonably foreseeable loss arising from their negligence.

We had the same problem with 2 leaks from the flat above. We ended up claiming on our insurance. 

https://www.landlordforumproject.co.uk/landlord-advice-help/damage-to-property-from-flat-upstairs/msg23707/#msg23707


Our insurance said it would be difficult to prove their negligence and put it down to accidental ( twice?).

They claimed on their insurance ....for a complete new kitchen as the water had damaged their kitchen units! Water apparently flows uphill from below the floorboards.  In hindsight I might go as far as to suspect the leak was deliberate as they sold the flat ( with shiny new kitchen) very soon after.

Still, we  got out own back on them.  They pulled our ( we own the freehold)garden wall down to allow access to their patch of garden so they could convert it to off road parking...Tbey didn't ask for permission so a letter from our solicitor made them reinstate the brick wall.