A mum has encouraged others to never take no for an answer after getting her insurers to pay out following a six-month battle - over a fallen wall.
Lucy Gawthorpe, 33, was abruptly awoken in the middle of the night when her garden wall crashed into her house on February 9.
The 30-year-old garden wall had crashed through the conservatory window of the family home in Nottingham at around 4am and caused water to spray out all over the kitchen.
Lucy Gawthorpe, 33, was abruptly awoken in the middle of the night when her garden wall crashed into her house on February 9.
The 30-year-old garden wall had crashed through the conservatory window of the family home in Nottingham at around 4am and caused water to spray out all over the kitchen.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00About four o'clock in the morning, it fell all in one go, shook the whole house, went into the
00:05kitchen to hear hissing water, looked under the sink and there was just water spraying everywhere.
00:10We had no idea what to do, whether it was safe. Spoke to someone on the phone,
00:14he started taking all the details, asked if we had anyone vulnerable here. I explained we've
00:18got a nearly two-year-old toddler. So he said, oh yeah, that's a vulnerable person, so it's an
00:23emergency. And then we got to the end of it and he said, oh actually, I can't do your claim on
00:27the phone, you need to log it online. I took my daughter to my sister-in-law's. Most of the
00:32wall had fallen, but there were still bits here and there still falling, so I didn't know if the
00:36rest of it was going to go in one go, so we obviously vacated the house. When I got to my
00:40sister-in-law's, I logged it online and then they said that they'd instructed someone to come out
00:47and look at it. So the first time that they came out, it was just an assessor, took some photos,
00:52it came about five days after it happened, so there was no urgency there. He then reported it,
00:56they then came back and said, oh we need to send a structural engineer out to see if it's insurable.
01:00So even at that point, they were like, it might not be insurable. So then they had a structural
01:05engineer report sent through to them. It took them a few days, maybe a week after, to come back to me
01:12and say it is not insured because it had insufficient weep hole drainage. So I instantly
01:17asked for a copy of the report because they hadn't sent that at this point. I read through the report
01:21and the report said, due to debris at ground level, they were unable to determine whether there
01:26was sufficient weep hole drainage. So I instantly ran back and said, I don't agree with your answer
01:32because it says this in the report. So then they said they can pass it on for a review for them to
01:38come back and say, oh yeah, I'll raise it in this meeting with my team leader and I'll raise it in
01:42that with the team leader. Every time I'm telling them, the wall's still half standing and I keep
01:46telling everyone how urgent it is and everyone on the phone's really nice and they're all like, yes,
01:50I understand. Yes, it needs sorting immediately. But then I've sat waiting again for weeks.
01:56So it was just toing and froing, constantly going, nope, they've made a decision, it's not covered.
02:00Me arguing it again and them saying, right, we'll escalate it to so-and-so. And then them coming
02:04back going, no, it's not covered. And then the last person that came out was someone from their
02:10internal surveying team and he said he was only coming out to look at the damage to the house.
02:15The wall wasn't covered at this point, they're just looking at the house
02:19and they're gonna look at how they can remove the debris to do the damage on the house
02:25without making more damage with the wall falling down. But my point was that they have to remove
02:31the wall to make it safe, so why not just rebuild the wall? So then he came into the back garden
02:36and he saw in the remaining wall that it had weep hole drainage and he said to me, did this go across
02:42the whole of the wall? And I said, yes. And he said, well, why did the report say that there
02:47isn't sufficient weep hole drainage? And I said, I don't know, it's not your report.
02:50So he said he'd raise it. So then he went back, raised it. Within a day of him doing it, he told
02:57me he'd done his report. And then I was waiting another two weeks before anyone got back to me
03:05on the report after me chasing constantly. And then they've come back this time and said, final
03:11decision. It's gone as high as it can go. It's not covered due to poor design, but they will
03:19cover all the windows on the house and the tap that's been damaged. I want the insurance to
03:24rebuild the wall. I mean, if I have to go to court and fight them, then I'll go for damages because
03:29I've had countless nights of worrying about how it's going to be built, how I'm going to
03:33afford to do it, the safety of me and my family. So it's more than just the wall. It's a constant
03:39stress. And I've had to try and deal with this while working full time and being a mother,
03:44just trying to get everything sorted.