The council have found the certificate for underpinning on the garage in the year 2000. This was to make the ground good around a drain that runs underneath the garage and involved replacing some of the brickwork.
The previous owner (who was our landlord before we bought the house) had no knowledge of this as he had to have some brickwork repaired on the garage through his insurance. He would have done it through the guarantee for the underpinning if he had known about it.
This does also mean that Broker Direct PLC insurance were correct about there being underpinning somewhere – but they were guessing and when you read what I have to say next you’ll understand what else they got wrong.
The structural engineer came to visit on the morning that I received the document from the council. It does refer to work done on the garage, which is not connected to the house, and it does not refer to the house. He agreed that the extra weight put onto the garage from the pitched roof was likely to have been too much for the garage and was most likely to be the reason for repairs being needed.
What about the house? The cracks on the brickwork outside are superficial. Most of the cracks inside are superficial and although we can see some patterns that appears to be coincidence.
The crack that we had the most concern about appears to have been cause by the usual disturbances that houses get (like our other cracks) with the addition of a water leak that we had in the loft. The structural engineer revealed a small part of the beam that was affected and it transpires that it is made of wood – and we all know what happens to wood when it gets wet, it expands.
There is nothing to worry about. Patch the cracks up, that’s all. That was what we needed to find out from our initial phone call to Broker Direct PLC insurance. Imagine how different that conversation could have been if they had sent a structural engineer out instead of the surveyor who thought we have subsidence!! Maybe something like, “Dear Mr & Mrs Walton, good news, our structural engineer advices that the cracks in your walls are cosmetic, the cause has been removed and the cracks can be repaired with DIY. Some slightly less good news is that we believe you may have had underpinning and will need to cancel your insurance policy with us. We will issue a full refund shortly.” I might have even suggested they keep the money to pay for the structural engineer!
Maybe that should be it then, we just walk away, accept what has happened and get on with life? I don’t think so. The amount of stress we have suffered is too much to just walk away from this without somebody taking responsibility for their actions – Grove & Dean who may have mis-sold insurance (I’m not convinced they were completely to blame and comparison sites do have a large part to play in this), Broker Direct PLC insurance who were blatantly obvious in their attempts to get out of paying for a claim and ignored most of what we told them unless it worked to their advantage, but most of all, South Cambridgeshire District Council Building Control, whose failure to produce documents impacted the purchase of a house, risked a mortgage being rejected and resulted in a property becoming uninsured at a time when the insurance was thought to be needed the most.
This is not the end, then. Once I have summarised all of the information we are going to receive I will be making complaints to the appropriate people/organisations and I do expect to influence change.