Arranging home insurance can become complicated if living in a council house or housing association property. The area of difficulty is often what is and isn’t covered by the landlords own insurance policy.
Home insurance is split into two main types: Contents insurance and building insurance.
Generally moveable items in your home need to be covered by home contents insurance. This might included your electrical items such as computers and hifi. Other items like your soft furnishings, carpets and home appliances would also be covered.
The two main types of contents insurance are ‘indemnity’ and ‘new for old’. The least expensive is indemnity cover. The insurance company will value your items when a claim is made rather than the items original price tag. For example, if a 10 year old television gets damaged resulting in a claim, the payout would reflect the age of the television.
The new for old cover contents insurance is more expensive. In the event on an incident a claim would be made for the value of a brand new replacement item. For example, the ten year old TV would receive a much bigger payout. Under this policy a brand spanking new product would be worth far more than an older worn out TV.
Home contents only covers possessions inside of your house. To cover the house structure building Insurance is needed. A council house tenant will not need to be involved in this. The council or housing association will arrange buildings insurance. If an incident occurred resulting in damage to the fabric of a house the council would make any repairs via their own insurance. Exceptions might occur if the damage was caused by negligence from the tenants actions. The landlord may seek to get compensation from the tenant to cover repairs if proof of negligence existed.
In conclusion it’s safe to say that a council tenant only needs to be concerned with home contents insurance. Our advice would be to buy ‘new for old’ cover to be certain of a worthwhile claim if the worst happens.
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