Coverage
All 33 boroughs, and the policy behind each doorstep
We attend across the whole of Greater London, but where you are matters less than what you hold. A freeholder in Bromley, a leaseholder in a Marylebone mansion block and a commercial tenant in Southwark are three different claims arising from the same failed joint. Below is how tenure changes the job, how each era of London housing tends to fail, and then the borough list. Send us your postcode if you would rather skip straight to booking.
Who insures the water that damaged your ceiling
This is the first thing we establish on the phone, because it decides who instructs the survey, who the report is addressed to, and whether anyone needs to consent before we attend. Your own documents govern in every case.
Freehold house
Your own buildings policy
One owner, one schedule, one excess. The trace and access limit in your documents is the ceiling on what the investigation can recover, and the failed pipe itself normally stays outside it. Simplest case to evidence, because nobody else has to agree to anything before we attend.
Leasehold flat in a block
Freeholder's block policy, usually
Buildings cover is almost always arranged by the freeholder or the management company and recharged through the service charge. The claim is made through the agent, the excess may be apportioned, and the decisive question is whether the origin sits in communal pipework or inside a private demise. That determination is the whole job.
Let property
Landlord buildings, tenant contents
The landlord insures the structure, the tenant insures their own belongings, and the two claims run separately from the same event. Access is the practical problem: the survey has to be arranged around a tenancy, and delay is what turns a repairable soak into a mould claim.
Commercial and mixed use
Lease terms decide it
On full repairing and insuring terms the tenant is often paying the premium and carrying the reinstatement obligation even though the landlord holds the policy. Water crossing between a ground floor unit and the flats above it produces two insurers and one argument, and the survey is what stops that argument being about opinions.
Six London building types, six failure patterns
Boroughs are administrative. Building stock is what actually predicts where the water is coming from, and most boroughs contain several of these side by side. Knowing which one we are walking into decides the method order before we arrive.
Victorian and Edwardian conversions
Common across Islington, Hackney, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Haringey
Original joists with decades of added pipework threaded through them, bathrooms built over what were once bedrooms, and waste runs boxed into corners. Water leaving a joint here travels along the joist before it appears, so the damp patch and the failure point are frequently in different rooms. An adjuster reading a report on one of these wants the travel path described, not just the endpoint.
Interwar mansion blocks
Common across Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Camden, Barnet
Shared vertical risers, communal tanks in some buildings, and cast iron or early copper that has been patched repeatedly. The origin is as likely to be communal as private, which is exactly why these produce the longest liability disputes and why the demise question has to be answered in writing before anyone starts recharging costs.
Post war estates and system build
Common across Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Greenwich
Solid floors, ducted service runs and concrete that hides everything until it is saturated. Non invasive method selection matters most here, because opening a structural floor speculatively is expensive access that a trace and access line will be queried on if nobody justified it at the time.
Screeded new build and underfloor heating
Common across Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, Brent, Barking and Dagenham
Manifolds feeding long loops cast into screed, pressurised cylinders, and boosted mains in taller buildings. Pressure loss on one loop is a contained problem if the circuits are isolated and tested individually. It becomes a floor replacement if somebody guesses. These are also the properties where a developer warranty may sit alongside the buildings policy.
Suburban semi detached stock
Common across Bromley, Croydon, Havering, Hillingdon, Bexley
Longer private supply pipes running under drives and gardens, loft tanks still in service, and outbuilding runs that burst after a freeze. Underground supply losses are the pattern here, and the first thing to establish is whether the failed section is on your side of the boundary at all before any fee is spent on it.
Conservation area and listed property
Common across Richmond, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Camden
Original fabric that cannot simply be cut into, consent requirements on reinstatement, and finishes where the making good costs more than the pipe. Access strategy is the whole conversation, and the report has to record why the least destructive route was chosen, because reinstatement to a listed standard is the line that gets scrutinised.
When the water came from somebody else’s flat
This is the most common call we take in inner London, and the thing that decides how it ends is almost never the plumbing. It is the order in which people were told. Notify the managing agent or freeholder in writing as soon as you see damage, even if you are certain whose it is, and keep the correspondence. Liability arguments in blocks are routinely settled on who informed whom and when, and a phone call nobody logged is worth very little six months later.
The second thing that decides it is whether anyone established the origin independently. A neighbour is not obliged to accept your plumber’s opinion, and frequently will not. A survey that identifies which system failed and where it sits relative to the demise boundary converts an argument between residents into a factual finding that an agent, an insurer or a solicitor can act on. That is the whole reason these surveys exist.
Access is the practical obstacle. We need to get into the property above, and the person who lives there has no particular reason to hurry. Where the agent instructs the survey, that access request carries far more weight than a note pushed under a door, which is another reason to route the notification through them at the outset rather than after a fortnight of trying to sort it between yourselves.
The order that works
- 1Photograph the damage before anything is moved or dried
- 2Notify the managing agent or freeholder in writing the same day
- 3Notify your own insurer and get a claim reference
- 4Ask who is instructing the survey, and who it should be addressed to
- 5Arrange access to the property above through the agent, not directly
- 6Keep every piece of correspondence, including the unanswered ones
Choose your borough
Camden
Camden Town · Kentish Town · Hampstead · Belsize Park · Holborn
Enfield
Enfield Town · Edmonton · Palmers Green · Southgate · Winchmore Hill
Hammersmith and Fulham
Hammersmith · Fulham · Shepherds Bush · Parsons Green
Haringey
Tottenham · Wood Green · Crouch End · Hornsey · Muswell Hill
Kensington and Chelsea
Kensington · Chelsea · Notting Hill · Earls Court · Holland Park
Richmond upon Thames
Richmond · Twickenham · Teddington · East Sheen · Kew
Tower Hamlets
Canary Wharf · Bethnal Green · Bow · Wapping · Whitechapel
Waltham Forest
Walthamstow · Leyton · Chingford · Leytonstone · Highams Park
Westminster
Marylebone · Pimlico · Paddington · Mayfair · St John’s Wood
Six things worth having in front of you when you call
None of it is mandatory. All of it shortens the call, and the last two shape how the visit is scheduled.
- Your postcode and the floor the property sits on
- Whether anyone below or beside you has reported damage
- Who holds the buildings policy: you, a freeholder or a managing agent
- Whether a claim is already open, and its reference if so
- When the damage was first discovered, as opposed to when it started
- Whether the water is still running or has been isolated