Home Insurance

Millions of UK households expose themselves to significant financial losses in the event of damage or destruction of their home, its contents, and/or claims from third parties.

If you have a mortgage, you might be obliged to ensure that you have adequate buildings insurance in place to protect your interests.

Buildings insurance

This cover protects the structure of the building and any fixtures and fittings. This includes the walls, roof, doors and windows, plus fixed items like kitchens and built-in wardrobes.

Contents insurance

Home contents insurance covers all the items within the property, such as furnishings, personal items, TVs and other belongings. Basically, if you turned your home upside down and shook it, all the stuff that fell out would typically be classed as contents, and all those things that don’t fall out are generally classed as part of the buildings.

Additional elements of protection

Alongside the basic buildings and/or contents cover, there are a number of additional cover options that may be available to enhance your protection. The type of policy you buy will dictate what additional options are available.

These could include subsidence insurance (not all policies include this as standard, which may not be an issue if you are not in a high-risk area), accidental damage to fixtures and fittings, and freezer cover to name but a few. 

What cover is needed?

There are a number of house insurance policies available to protect your property. Each is designed to meet your own circumstances, whether you are:

•       A homeowner.
•       Rent a property.
•       Or are a landlord.

Separate buildings and contents insurance cover is available, though these can also be bought as a combined policy if required.

Homeowners should have cover for both their building and the contents. However, leaseholders in a block of flats often have a shared buildings insurance policy, which is normally sufficient. Though, you may need to check whether your fixtures and fittings are included as part of the freeholder’s buildings cover because in some cases it may not be.

Tenants are not normally responsible for insuring the structure of the building, so a contents-only policy will usually suffice.

Landlords typically need to have buildings insurance and may also need to consider landlord contents cover. Although the contents element can be limited to just communal contents or fixtures and fittings.

Next steps

Alternatively, if you know what you want, why not use our online quotation system? We offer a comprehensive quote system for buildings and contents insurance. Follow through and answer the quote questions.