Pricing
A leak produces four bills, not one
Most pricing pages quote a single number and leave you to discover the rest at settlement. An escape of water actually splits into four separate lines, and your policy treats each of them differently. Below is what each line is, who normally carries it, what sets our own fee, and where trace and access cover reaches. Every figure we charge is confirmed before anyone travels.
The four lines and who carries them
Read your own schedule alongside this. Wordings differ between insurers and the limits are yours, not ours, but the shape below holds across mainstream UK buildings policies.
Line 1: the detection survey
Usually recoverable under trace and access
The fee for attending, testing and identifying where the water is escaping. This is the line most buildings policies are willing to meet under a trace and access extension, because finding the leak is what limits the damage the insurer would otherwise pay for.
Line 2: opening up and making good
Usually recoverable under trace and access
Lifting the floor, cutting the ceiling, chasing the wall, then closing it all back up afterwards. Trace and access extensions are normally written to cover both halves of this, the opening and the reinstatement of what was opened, because neither is useful without the other.
Line 3: the failed pipe or fitting itself
Almost always yours
The length of copper, the failed compression joint, the perished flexible tail. Policies routinely exclude repairing the thing that leaked. This is the single most common surprise in an escape of water claim, so it is worth knowing before the engineer arrives rather than after.
Line 4: the damage the water caused
The main escape of water claim
Ruined ceilings, saturated screed, swollen flooring, drying equipment, redecoration. This is the actual escape of water claim and it sits under a separate part of your schedule from trace and access, with your escape of water excess applied to it.
Our published rates by attendance window
These are the rates we publish for line 1. The exact figure for your property is confirmed when you describe it, before anyone is dispatched, and it does not move on the day.
| Service | 7AM – 5PMStandard hours | 5PM – 12AMEvenings | 12AM – 7AMNight / emergency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leak Detection | POA | POA | POA |
| Thermal Imaging Survey | POA | POA | POA |
| Acoustic Detection | POA | POA | POA |
| Trace & Access (Insurance) | POA | POA | POA |
| Emergency Plumber | POA | POA | POA |
“POA” means the rate for that slot hasn’t been published yet. Call for a confirmed figure.
For context, not as our price. Checkatrade’s published cost guide records UK leak detection averaging around £162 per job, typically £115 to £234, with a full spread of £80 to £1,600 where a leak proves hard to trace, and hourly rates of £95 to £145. Those are their national figures. We quote a confirmed fee rather than an open hourly clock precisely so the upper end of that spread cannot happen to you by accident.
What actually sets your figure
We would rather explain the variables than publish a menu that pretends every property is the same. These are the six things we ask about on the phone, and between them they decide the number you are given.
How many circuits have to be eliminated
A combi feeding one bathroom is one set of tests. A sealed heating system with underfloor loops on three zones, a pressurised cylinder and a separate mains supply is several, and each has to be isolated and tested on its own before anything can be ruled out.
What the floor is made of
A suspended timber floor with a lifting board over the run is a different job from 75mm of sand and cement screed with pipes cast into it. The screed is not harder to read, it just takes longer, because tracer gas has to be given time to travel and surface.
Whether the water is still running
A live escape has a signal to follow and usually resolves faster. A leak that has already been isolated, or one that only appears when the heating fires, has to be provoked before it can be measured, and that adds time to the visit.
Who the report has to satisfy
A homeowner who just wants the leak stopped needs a location. A claim being handled by a loss adjuster needs cause, origin, method, moisture readings and dated photographs in a document that survives being read by someone who was never on site. The second takes longer to produce.
When you need us there
Attendance outside standard hours carries an uplift, and that uplift is stated as an exact figure when you book, not applied afterwards. The table above shows which windows we publish rates for.
Whether access is already available
Cleared cupboards, a reachable loft hatch, a working stopcock and a neighbour who will let us in all shorten a survey. In flat to flat cases, the single biggest delay is usually waiting for permission to enter the property above.
How far trace and access reaches
Trace and access is an extension, not a separate policy
It sits inside the buildings section of your schedule with its own limit, and that limit is printed in your own documents. Read it before you commission anything, because it is the number that decides whether a large investigation is worth running in one visit or staging across two.
It generally responds only where there is damage to claim for
Most wordings tie the extension to an insured escape of water. If nothing has been damaged, there may be no claim for the detection to attach to, even where the leak is real. A dropping boiler pressure with a dry house is the classic example.
Gradual deterioration is the usual reason cover is declined
Wordings from mainstream UK insurers exclude damage that happened slowly through wear, corrosion or failed sealant. Report the day you discover damage, describe what you found rather than guessing how long it had been happening, and let the survey establish the cause.
The insurer has duties too
Under the FCA Insurance: Conduct of Business Sourcebook, ICOBS 8.1.1R requires an insurer to handle claims promptly and fairly, and ICOBS 8.1.2R prohibits unreasonably rejecting a claim. If you believe a decision is wrong, the Financial Ombudsman Service publishes its decisions on escape of water complaints and they are worth reading before you accept a refusal.
A note on what we are. We locate leaks and document them. We are not insurance brokers, loss assessors or advisers, we are not regulated to tell you how to run a claim, and we do not act for your insurer. The Association of British Insurers publishes consumer guidance on escape of water claims, and your own policy schedule governs. Where you want someone to argue the claim on your behalf, that is a regulated loss assessor’s job, not ours.
Questions about the bill
Can you invoice my insurer directly instead of me?
That depends on who instructed us. Where an insurer or their appointed adjuster instructs the survey, we invoice them on their terms. Where you instruct us yourself, which is the more common route, you pay us and then recover the detection and access lines through your claim. We are a detection and reporting contractor, not an agent of your insurer, so we cannot commit them to paying anything. Get your claim reference and any pre authorisation in writing first.
My managing agent wants the block policy to pay. Does that change your fee?
No. The fee is set by the property and the visit, not by who ends up settling it. What changes is the report. A block claim usually needs the origin pinned to a specific demise or to communal pipework, because that single finding decides whether the freeholder, the leaseholder above or the leaseholder below carries the cost. We will state what the evidence supports and nothing beyond it.
What do published market rates actually look like?
Checkatrade's cost guide puts UK leak detection at an average of around £162 per job, with a typical range of £115 to £234, a full spread from £80 to £1,600 once hard to trace work is included, and hourly rates of £95 to £145. Those are their figures, not ours, and they are national rather than London specific. We publish our own rates by attendance window in the table on this page and confirm the exact figure for your property before anyone travels.
Why is the detection fee quoted separately from the repair?
Because they answer to different parts of your policy and, frequently, to different payers. Detection and access are the lines a trace and access extension is written for. The repair to the failed pipe usually is not covered at all. Bundling them into one figure makes the claimable portion impossible for an adjuster to separate, which is exactly the kind of invoice that gets queried and delays settlement.
If the survey finds nothing, am I still charged?
It depends which nothing, and the distinction is the whole of it. Attend a confirmed live leak and fail to locate it, and the detection fee is waived. Establish instead that there is no leak at all, each system individually eliminated, and the visit is charged: that is the survey succeeding rather than failing. You get the eliminations in writing either way, because a documented negative is what rules out a plumbing escape and points a claim towards condensation, a roof defect or a failed seal.
Does a report guarantee my claim gets paid?
No, and any contractor who tells you otherwise is overselling. A report establishes findings of fact: where the water came from, by what method that was determined, what was wet and by how much. Whether those facts fall inside your policy wording is the insurer's decision and, if disputed, the Financial Ombudsman Service's. What a good report removes is the ability to decline a claim for want of evidence.
Get your figure before you commit
Tell us the property, the symptoms and whether a claim is already open. You get the confirmed detection fee, the earliest slot, and a plain answer on what your policy is likely to reach.
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