Floater

To conclude my trilogy of stories on this weekend which marks the 10th anniversary of the widespread surface water flooding of Hull, Yorkshire I recount this epic, based on a true series of events. Names have been changed for privacy reasons.

Place; Hull, East Yorkshire, UK
Date;  25.06.07

It started to rain hard at about 2pm on June 24th 2007 and did not cease until well into the following day, a Monday.

The excessive and unprecedented volume of surface water produced under these climatic conditions caused the sewers and domestic drains to become overwhelmed and discharge onto the public highways, footways and around a good proportion of the city housing.

Mrs Bravo, as we will call her, was anxiously watching the weather from her terraced house on Prince Consort Road, Hull.

In the street outside there was a wall of water across the full width of the carriageway and passing cars caused a violent bow wave and tidal type bore which lapped the murky mess at her very doorstep.

Her garden wall provided a barrier against more significant wash and thankfully the clearance from forecourt to the level of the air bricks ventilating under the house ground floors was not breached.

Running through to the rear of her property Mrs Bravo watched as a swell of murky water approached across the rear garden. A solitary air brick, redundant after concreting of the back lobby floor, disappeared under the liquid surface but did not provide any potential for further ingress.

The remainder of the length of wall to the kitchen and rear living room remained free of any inundation to its air bricks.

The hundred year old house had been built sufficiently out of the ground to resist a one in one hundred year flood event. No water entered the property and after conversing with her neighbours Mrs Bravo learnt that they too had escaped any ingress.

It had been a narrow escape. Ten thousand households in Hull had not been so lucky that day.

A few weeks later mould appeared in a kitchen base unit and erring on the cautious side, as was her nature,  Mrs Bravo casually rang her Insurance Company to notify them of this observation.

She was not otherwise too concerned, after all the house had not been flooded. It was an old house. Moisture and mould sometimes happened.

Surprisingly, in early August, a Surveyor arrived. He had been engaged in a roundabout way by a Flood Remediation Company themselves at the beck and call of Loss Adjusters and so on up the paperwork trail to her Insurance Company.

Even more startling was the Surveyor's recommendation for a full strip out of the ground floor and very extensive and comprehensive flood remediation works.

Mrs Bravo respectfully asked why this was necessary given that no water had entered her house.

No satisfactory explanation was given.

Faced with an impending invasion by contractors Mrs Bravo moved upstairs with her possessions including pets. The bathroom became an impromptu kitchenette, the three cats resided in the back bedroom and Mrs Bravo established a bedsit in the front bedroom.

The haste of the builders to attack the job in order to move on to a vast backlog of similar work in the flood stricken City led to their depositing of the larger items of furniture in the back garden along with the carpets which were soon ruined by the open air and by now cold early autumn weather.

Although in no way damaged the casualty list of stripped out items was added to by the removal of the, until then perfectly functioning central heating system and gas fires.

The estimated time of enforced upstairs living was given as no more than 12 weeks, therefore with the inferred prospect of everything to be back to normal well before Christmas.

In January 2008 the ground floor accommodation of the house remained as an empty shell.

The project cost to return the house to habitable condition was running at £40,952.56.

Worryingly there was no apparent co-ordination between the Insurers, Loss Adjusters, Surveyors, Remediation Company and the on site Builders.

Mrs Bravo had suspected this all along from observing the infrequent comings and mostly long on site absences of workers and tradespersons from her first floor vantage point.

A meeting of all parties in late January 2008 was an opportunity to express concerns and apportion blame for fundamental omissions of a Health and Safety nature and not a little shock from some attendees that Mrs Bravo was still in residence when in such projects the policyholder would normally be moved out and found suitable alternative accommodation.

Closer scrutiny by those responsible for issuing payments for work done could not account for invoiced figures for a number of items including replacement joinery, plastering and flooring which simply did not exist.

One individual claimed item was loosely described as "Flood Allocation uplift figure" at £12,720.91.

Works and squabbles dragged on and it was not until July 2008, more than a year after the event, that the Surveyors felt able to certify the project as having been satisfactorily completed.

Mrs Bravo, by now somewhat of an expert herself in the theory of flood remediation was not of the same opinion and added a lengthy list of incomplete items. She reserved the right to express her position that the attendance on site by the original and main building company to attend to snagging issues ( items of incomplete or inadequate work) was not welcome given performance or lack of it to date.

The Loss Adjusters sent to the Insurers a Final Report and a note of costs charged under the claim in the sum of £58,936.

Resuming as much of a normal life as possible Mrs Bravo move downstairs to re-occupy the whole house.

In August 2009 dampness surfaced in the repaired parts of the property.

The Flood Remediation Company, under whom the original builder had been sub contracted, were instructed to carry out any such works as necessary at their own cost as part of Warranty and "after sales service".

Mrs Bravo was increasingly frustrated and distressed by her experiences.

Although to date the repair costs and her incidental expenses had been borne by the Insurers Mrs Bravo then found that her annual Policy Premium upon renewal had increased by a factor of ten from that paid before the flood.

In September 2009 she took action independently by engaging the services of a Claims Consultant Company to try to sort out the whole mess. Ironically the Claims Investigators were a subsidiary company of the original Loss Adjusters but it took a couple of months for them to realise this, declare their vested interest and drop out.

The respected watchdog organisation, The National Flood Forum, was approached by Mrs Bravo, and sent along an impartial Surveyor to inspect and advise.

With very little investigation a number of significant and fundamental defects and deficiencies were revealed in the extensive works undertaken under the insurance claim. There had been no ventilation provided in the sleeper walls under the replacement ground floors. The Electrical system was not to Regulations. Dampness persisted in previously stripped out and reinstated areas.

The Loss Adjusters disputed that anything more than minor works were required.

Under further and more detailed inspection the suspicions of the new and impartial Surveyor were confirmed beyond doubt .

The only reasonable course of action, he concluded, was to strip out, again, the whole of the ground floor.

This incurred a further cost of £37,062.55.

The Combined Grand Total ,give or take a few pence, stood at £98,000.

The market value of the property at the time of the original claim was somewhat less.

As part of the inevitable enquiry into the scandalous chain of events the extensive paper trail was scrutinised in fine detail.

Way back in August 2007 it appears that the original Surveyor had made written notes to the effect that water did not appear to have entered the house.

It was estimated by the National Flood Forum that ,to have addressed the initial concerns of Mrs Bravo, a sum of around £4000 would have been sufficient to cover a "worst case" scenario of any and all eventualities.

The closing remarks of the Independent Expert attributed the vast difference in figures to negligence, contempt and greed.

There is no record in the public domain that any sanctions were ever imposed on those involved.

It appears to have been a write off or a whitewash.