They called it wear and tear.
The oldest one in the book.
Almost everything in your home is partly old. That is not, on its own, a reason to refuse your claim — and the burden of proving the exclusion is theirs, not yours.
Who's behind thisSteve Smart Helped people recover £25M+ from rejected claimsRe: Your claim
Dear ,
We have now completed our review of your claim.
The damage has occurred gradually over a period of time and is therefore attributable to wear and tear, which is excluded under your policy.Our inspection found the roof covering to be in a poor state of repair, consistent with age-related deterioration.This is a maintenance issue rather than a one-off insured event.The policy does not cover damage caused by wear, tear, or gradual deterioration.
We therefore regret that we are unable to meet your claim on this occasion.
Yours sincerely,
Claims Department
What they mean
Home insurance covers sudden, accidental, one-off events — a storm, an escape of water, a fire. It does not cover things wearing out. Every home policy in the country excludes wear and tear, and that exclusion is entirely legitimate: an insurer is not there to re-roof your house because the roof got old.
So when a letter says "wear and tear", it is pointing at a real clause. The question is never whether the clause exists. It is whether it actually applies to what happened to you.
Where it overreaches
"Wear and tear" is the most elastic phrase in claims handling, because almost every part of a house is partly old. That makes it available as a reason in almost every case — including a great many where the real cause was an insured event that happened to strike something that was not brand new.
The move to watch for is subtle: the letter notes that something was old, and then treats that observation as if it were a finding about what caused the damage. Those are different things. A twelve-year-old roof that survives every storm for twelve years and then loses its tiles in an 80mph gust has not been destroyed by age.
The counter-arguments
These are the points that put the burden back where it belongs. Not every one will apply to your case — the letter we write picks the ones that do.
This is the one most people get backwards, and it matters more than any other point on this page. Your job is to show that what happened falls within the cover you bought — a storm, an escape of water, an impact. Once you have done that, it is generally for the insurer to prove that an exclusion takes it back out again.
So "we consider this to be wear and tear" is not a conclusion. It is a claim the insurer has to stand up with evidence. Asking them to do so — in writing, specifically — changes the conversation, and a surprising number of refusals do not survive the question.
Burden of proof — established principle of English insurance lawAge is a fact about an object. Wear and tear is a claim about causation. A letter that establishes the first and asserts the second has skipped the part that actually does the work.
The useful question, put plainly: what is the evidence that deterioration — rather than the event — caused this damage? If the answer is that the item was simply not new, that is not evidence.
Where an insured event and a pre-existing weakness both play a part, what usually matters is which one was the real, effective cause of the damage. Wear that made something more vulnerable is not automatically the cause of its failure.
This is the argument that recovers a lot of storm and escape-of-water claims: the event did the damage; the age of the thing it damaged is background, not cause.
Proximate causeRefusals often rest on a short site visit and a paragraph of conclusion. You are entitled to ask for the report, the photographs, and the reasoning behind it. Ask for them.
Two things tend to follow. Sometimes the evidence is thinner than the letter’s confidence implied. And sometimes the report itself does not actually say what the refusal letter says it says — which is a point worth making directly.
Insurers must handle claims promptly and fairly and must not unreasonably reject a claim. A refusal that rests on an unevidenced assertion, or that ignores what you have told them, is not just annoying — it is a regulatory point you are entitled to raise.
FCA ICOBS 8.1.1RSources: FCA Handbook — ICOBS 8.1 (claims handling)
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Questions
Not on its own. Age is not the same as wear and tear. The insurer generally has to show that deterioration — rather than the insured event you are claiming for — actually caused the damage.
If the letter establishes that something was old and then treats that as proof of what caused the damage, it has skipped a step, and that gap is where most challenges start.
Broadly: you show your loss falls within the cover you bought, and the insurer shows that an exclusion takes it back out. Wear and tear is an exclusion, so it is generally for the insurer to prove it applies.
This is why asking them to set out their evidence in writing is such an effective first move.
No. A loss adjuster acts for the insurer, not for you, and their view is an opinion rather than a ruling. You can ask for the full report and the photographs it relies on, and you can challenge it.
If you disagree, you can complain to the insurer and then take it to the Financial Ombudsman, which is free.
Then the exclusion may well apply to the parts that had worn out — but that is not always the whole claim. A storm that damages a roof already needing attention may still be the cause of the specific damage you are claiming for.
It is also worth checking that any reduction they apply is limited to the element genuinely affected, rather than applied across everything.
No. smarterclaims publishes legal information and writes letters you can send yourself — like a digital version of a published legal guide. We are not a law firm and we do not give advice.
If your case needs professional representation, we will tell you, and we can introduce you to the right people if you ask us to.
Checking whether you have a case is free. You see the analysis and the arguments before you pay anything.
The rebuttal letter is £49.99. It comes with an explanation of where you stand and a step-by-step plan.
There is a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. If the pack is not useful, tell us within 14 days and we refund you in full.
It should not, and firms are required to handle complaints fairly. Insurers deal with complaints as routine business — a well-argued letter tends to be taken more seriously than an angry phone call, not less.
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Meet Steve Who's behind this
Forty years inside the insurance industry, in both senior legal and commercial roles. Former UK General Counsel at AIG. Current Chairman of Lancashire Insurance UK. Regular voice on LBC radio. Steve has watched the same disputes come up again and again — and built the library of arguments that smarterclaims runs on, based on his decades of experience.
“I've spent forty years on the inside of insurance. The same excuses come up again and again, and most consumers don't know how to overcome them. This is the tool I wish my clients had before they called me.”Steve SmartMore about Steve
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