Does home insurance cover storm damage to fences?
Often, but check two things first: whether fences are covered at all, and what your excess is. Many home insurance policies include storm damage to fences, and many define a storm by a minimum wind speed. Most exclude rot and gradual deterioration, so a fence that has been failing for years rarely qualifies. If your excess is more than the repair, claiming gains you nothing.
Two hurdles stand between a downed fence and a paid claim. The first is the definition of storm. Cover for fences is common, but insurers define a storm differently and some require evidence of wind speeds above a stated threshold before the claim is valid. The second hurdle is the rot exclusion, and it is where most fence claims die. Most policies exclude gradual deterioration and rot, so a fence that has been declining for years rarely results in a successful claim even when a storm is what finally put it down.
Photograph everything before you move a single panel. Take a wide shot of the whole run, then a close-up of each broken post at ground level, and note the date and the name of the storm. Keep the broken components in the garden until the claim is settled, because an assessor will want to see the failure point. Get a written, itemised quote rather than a lump sum. If the post base in your photographs is dark, soft and crumbling, be ready for the insurer to call it rot rather than storm damage.
Check your excess against the size of the job before you pick up the claim form. Our repairs are £60 to £150 per repair and panel replacement is £85 to £150 per panel, both excluding VAT. A typical household excess can sit at or above those figures, in which case there is nothing left to recover. Ask your insurer what a small claim does to your renewal price before you commit to it. For one panel and one post, paying direct is often the faster and cheaper route.
A whole run down is a different calculation. Closeboard fencing installed runs £90 to £130 per metre excluding VAT, so a 15 metre boundary lands somewhere around £1,350 to £1,950 excluding VAT, and gates add £200 to £700 each. Against numbers like those an excess is a small share and a claim is worth making. Where someone else's property caused the damage, a trampoline, a shed roof or a tree from next door, that conversation starts with your neighbour and their insurer rather than with yours.
Check who should be claiming before anyone claims. If the fence belongs to your neighbour, it goes through their buildings insurance, and you cannot have it repaired without their permission. If you rent, it is your landlord's policy and their decision. Citizens Advice is clear that tenants should ask the landlord to deal with it and should not alter walls or fences without permission. Where nobody can establish who owns the fence, HM Land Registry's guidance is to treat it as a party boundary and only alter or replace it by agreement.
More in repairs and storms, or browse all 36 questions on the FAQ index.
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