My tenant is turning my 4 bed house into a hmo children’s home. I’ve let him carry on with the works that he requires (fire doors em lighting ect ect ) but upon popping in last week he’s knocked down a main wall to put a doorway through. He’s sent me pics of the different stages of the lintel installation ect ect and it all seems legit. This left me worrying about who is liable if it does fall down if the standard is not up to regs ?
Does anyone know of any specialist type of insurance policy I can request him to take out so if any of his works do go wrong the structure of my property is covered? I’m pretty sure my buildings cover won’t pay out for tenants lintel installation !!!
It would not ordinarily be necessary to notify your insurance of minor structural works, such as putting a door with lintel into an existing wall.
That said these works would generally be covered by your contractors public liability insurance.
I assume your Tenant might be a company if they are converting and running a HMO, so it might be worth requesting a copy of their insurance cover for these works, or the insurance details of the contractor that they have arranged to carry out the works.
er… are you sure about that? When the OP says “main wall”, I assume supporting wall and, if so, that’s a major structural risk if not done right. If it’s a stud wall, it wouldn’t need a lintel.
If the OP has to claim anything on buildings insurance, they’ve just given the insurers the perfect excuse to deny the claim.
Does he have planning consent? Is he intending to run the children’s home and if so is he licensed/qualified? What happens when you want to sell the property?
Also ask for copies of guarantees by trades for any works done
Also ask for copies of photos of the work as it was done at each stage, and copies of drawings/plans
Check your insurance policy you probably should have notified them about works being done
When selling your property if building works don’t have building control certificates or eg if recent windows don’t have Fensa certificates the usual solution is an indemnity policy. These don’t fix the problem as such but provide cover in the instance that things go wrong and the council pursues you for not having the right docs
(“An indemnity policy for lack of building control covers the financial costs of enforcement action by the local authority if they discover unapproved work, including costs to alter, demolish, or reinstate the property, and any resulting decrease in property value, but it doesn’t cover the quality of the work itself or actual repair bills for defects”)
The other ‘insurance’ you could have to check if ok, if you don’t have suitable gtees from tenant/trades is to get the works inspected by a surveyor/structural surveyor or independent builder of your choosing - with him present so he can explain exactly what he did, and get him to pay for that advice
You could post the photos and description of the works and how done (as described by tenant) on a forum like diynot and ask the experts there whether it looks like it will be ok