Storm Damage Roof Insurance Claims In Hounslow: How Insurers Decide, And How To Get Paid

A storm damage roof claim in Hounslow gets decided by three things: the wind record for the day, what the rest of your roof looked like before it happened, and how well someone explains the link between the two. Most refusals come down to the second one. Buildings insurers pay out on storm damage all the time, but they don’t pay for roofs that were already failing, and a lot of the housing in this borough is old enough for that argument to come up. Of the refused claims people bring to us, most turn on “wear and tear” rather than any doubt about the weather. What follows is how the process works from the insurer’s side, what to collect, and what to do if the answer comes back as no.

The weather station that will judge your Hounslow storm claim

The first thing a claims handler checks is whether storm conditions happened at all. Most buildings policies set their bar at about 55mph gusts, force 10 on the Beaufort scale, though wordings differ and some don’t define a storm anywhere. In Hounslow the nearest official record is unusually close. The Met Office runs an observing station at Heathrow - the one that logged 40.2C in July 2022 - so the wind data used for your claim may well have been measured a mile or two from your roof, on flat, open airfield.

That helps and hurts. A reading taken close by is harder for anyone to dismiss. But an open airfield doesn’t behave like a street of semis in Heston, where gusts get squeezed between gable ends and whip over hipped roofs at angles an anemometer never sees. The Financial Ombudsman’s guidance on storm damage says as much: weather at a property can differ from the station record, it may look at more than one station, and it doesn’t treat 55mph as a wall. It notes the Beaufort scale expects slight structural damage from around 47mph, and that intense rain, hail or snow in a short spell can count as a storm without any wind. A storm with a Met Office name helps your case, though the records still get checked. If you’re not sure whether what happened to your roof is claimable, our storm damage repair team can look at it and give you a straight answer before you pick up the phone to the insurer.

Why storm claims on Hounslow’s 1930s roofs get turned down

Every buildings policy excludes wear and tear and gradual deterioration. The insurer’s question isn’t really “was there a storm?” but “did the storm do this, or did it just finish off something that was already going?” The Ombudsman frames it the same way, and it won’t uphold a complaint where the storm only exposed a problem the owner should have known about.

Hounslow’s housing stock hands adjusters that argument in a few predictable forms. Interwar semis in Cranford, Hounslow West and Feltham often carry ridge and hip tiles bedded in sand and cement, and after sixty-odd years that mortar goes soft and powdery. When a gale lifts a ridge tile off and the bed underneath is dust, a surveyor will say the tile was only sitting there by its own weight. The Victorian terraces of Isleworth and Brentford have their own weak spot, nail sickness: the original iron nails rust through, slates start slipping one at a time, then a blustery night sends a dozen down at once. And rear-extension flat roofs across the borough are the Ombudsman’s own worked example, where felt that was cracked, blistered and patched before the wind got under it is treated as deterioration and not storm damage.

None of this makes an old roof unclaimable. The burden is on the insurer to show an exclusion applies, and the Ombudsman has said an aerial photo with no proper inspection behind it often won’t be enough to do that. But if your roof has some of these features, expect them to come up, and be ready with evidence of the roof’s condition before the storm, not just after it.

Photos and dates: the evidence you gather before anyone climbs up

Most of the evidence that wins a claim gets collected in the first day, and none of it needs you anywhere near a ladder. Take photos from the pavement and the garden before anything gets moved: the gap in the roof, the tiles or slates where they landed, the gutter they bounced off. Phone photos carry a timestamp in their data, which beats “I think it was Tuesday” every time. Write down when you first noticed the damage and what the weather had been doing overnight.

Then keep the physical evidence. A fallen tile with a clean snapped nail hole reads differently from one whose nail rusted away years ago, and the broken bits in your front garden are the best record of that. Put them in a bag rather than the bin. If you have older photos of the house - an estate agent’s listing, a Google Street View image from a few years back, a survey from when you bought it - dig them out. They’re about the only proof of what the roof looked like before the storm, which is exactly what’s in dispute when wear and tear comes up. If water came in, photograph the ceiling and anything it ruined too, because internal damage often ends up on the same claim.

What a roofer’s report on storm damage should say

Insurers usually send their own surveyor or loss adjuster, sometimes only a drone. You’re entitled to your own opinion as well, and a written report from a roofer who has actually been up there carries weight. The Ombudsman says clear, detailed reports that explain the expert’s reasoning, backed by photographs, tend to be the most persuasive evidence it sees.

A useful report covers more than “tiles missing, replace.” It should record which slope was hit and whether that matches the wind direction on the day; storms here mostly come in from the south-west, so damage on a sheltered north-east slope needs explaining. It should describe the fixings: sheared nails and snapped tile nibs point to force, while nails rusted to nothing point to age. It should say what state the rest of the roof is in, because a sound covering with one torn-off section tells a very different story from a roof that’s tired all over. Close-up photos taken at roof level, with dates, and a costed scope of the repair finish it off.

An honest roofer will sometimes tell you things you’d rather not hear, such as that the ridge was on its way out anyway. That’s still worth knowing before you file, because an insurer’s surveyor will reach the same conclusion and you’ll have paid an excess to find out.

Make it safe now, repair it properly once the insurer agrees

There are two separate jobs here, and mixing them up is how people end up out of pocket. The first is making the roof safe and watertight: a temporary cover, refixing tiles that are still hanging on, clearing loose debris that could come down. Policies generally expect you to take reasonable steps to limit further damage, and emergency work like this is normally part of the claim. Photograph before and after, tell the insurer what was done, and keep the invoice.

The second job is the permanent repair, and this one should normally wait until the claim is accepted or the insurer has agreed the scope. Some insurers will want to use their own contractor. Others will pay a cash settlement based on a quote and let you choose who does the work, and it’s worth asking which applies before anyone orders tiles. If scaffolding is needed, check whether it’s included in what’s been agreed; on a Hounslow terrace with no side access it can be a sizeable share of the bill. We deliberately keep the first-hour stuff short here. If water is coming through the ceiling right now, our emergency roof repairs page is the more useful place to be.

When the damage came from a plane, not the weather

Hounslow has one complication most of the country doesn’t. A small cluster of tiles missing after a calm night, under the Heathrow approach, may not be weather damage at all. Wake vortices from landing aircraft occasionally reach roof level, and Heathrow runs its own scheme to repair verified strikes at no cost to the homeowner.

For your claim, the thing to know is that vortex damage and storm damage go down different routes, and sending a vortex strike through your buildings policy uses up your excess and a claim on your record for something the airport would have fixed. If the damage looks like it might be a vortex strike, read our guide to Heathrow wake vortex roof damage before contacting your insurer. It covers the signs and how the scheme works. On a genuinely stormy day, the insurance route is almost always the right one.

Refused? Complain first, then go to the Financial Ombudsman

A refusal letter is not the end of it. Ask the insurer, in writing, for the surveyor’s report and the specific policy wording it’s relying on, then make a formal complaint pointing to your own evidence: the weather record, the photographs, your roofer’s report. The insurer then has eight weeks to send a final response.

If that final response is still a no, or eight weeks go by without one, you can take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service. It’s free, and you have six months from the date of the final response, as set out in the Ombudsman’s time limits. The Ombudsman asks three questions: were there storm conditions on or around the date, is the damage the kind a storm causes, and was the storm the main cause. It pulls its own historic weather data to answer the first. For a named storm, the Met Office storm centre keeps a record of each one, which is worth a screenshot for your file. Claims on older roofs do get upheld when the evidence shows a sound roof and a real storm. They mostly don’t when all you can say is that it was windy some time last winter.

If you’d like a written condition report on your roof after a storm, whether or not you end up claiming, get in touch for a free survey in Hounslow.