Postbox - Subsidence charter hollow and worthless.

(From Post Magazine)

As one of the few loss assessors who have specialised in subsidence claims for the past 25 years, I read the 'Subsidence Focus' (PM, 25 August, pp12-18) with interest.

During recent years, as with the handling of other perils, insurers' proactive approach to subsidence claims has resulted in a more or less universal practice of attempting to apply the same criteria to every loss.

This has involved limited investigation and monitoring, chopping down all or as much vegetation as they can get away with, and sending in a panel contractor at cut-price rates to fill in the cracks and slap a coat of paint on the walls.

Getting down to brass tacks, the underlying ethos is always to avoid underpinning if at all possible. If causation - as is usually the case and certainly in London - is desiccation due to moisture abstraction by tree roots, the desired outcome for insurers is often achieved by undertaking only sufficient investigation to determine the existence of desiccation and the identity of any roots that may be found in the bore or bores augured.

As the object is not to ascertain sub-strata conditions for the possible eventuality of underpinning, bores are seldom taken below three metres, and the number of bores is limited to the nearest locations of damage, and often no more than two.

Control bores and level surveys are a rarity, and drains are not always tested. Monitoring studs are affixed but readings taken irregularly. Arborists are engaged to identify vegetation for removal, on the pretext their judgement is authoritative when, in fact, there is no amenity valuation or real consideration as to whether the vegetation they propose to remove is instrumental in the damage, or to what degree, or whether the removal of only the higher moisture-demanding trees and shrubs might preclude the necessity to remove all.