Firstly I am delighted you have won this one and congratulations on your persistence.  There is no question that this is a major victory.  Well done to you and everyone involved.

That said I confess that, before you did, I doubted you would succeed.  My doubt was based on the wording of my own insurance contract which, frankly, is not worth the paper it is written on.

My question therefore is, did they admit that they were wrong, or did they just change their mind without admitting fault.  The significance of this question is that, in the latter case, it might well be a cynical attempt to minimise poor publicity without any long term effect, whereas the former case is a real change of position.

I share your concerns about structural failing, which is why I cynically suspect it might be more about avoiding bad publicity rather than about a real change of heart.

Hopefully you can tell us and hopefully my cynicism is misplaced.

@jamespa I have read and seen the IWA correspondence but it’s not my place to publicly comment on what it said and if any fault was admitted to. I will leave that to @ian-w to disclose if he so wishes. 

I will say this much though… sometimes the most revealing thing about a letter is not what it admits, but what it carefully stops short of admitting.

@ian-w, thank you for your kind words, and I was happy to help, but you and Sarah did the hard part. You documented everything, you kept pushing when most people would have stopped and you had the courage to put your story on the public record. All I did was try to get it noticed by the right people.

Your point about structural failure is exactly right and the water industry analogy is painfully apt. Ofwat, MCS, the insurance framework around certification… they all share the same fundamental design flaw. The bodies supposed to protect consumers are bizarrely either funded by, appointed by or structurally dependent on the industries they regulate, and I can’t help feel that the conflict of interest is not incidental.

But I’m really pleased you triumphed and got the W, and hopefully we’ll start to see more positive outcomes to homeowner complaints.

@JamesPa the letter from IWA Insurance stated: “This assessment was undertaken by the Claims Manager but their report unfortunately misquoted what should have been undertaken in line with breach of building regulations.” Further on they state: “It has been recognised by IWA that this should not have been missed in our final response to you…”. I read this to be an admission that they made a mistake. This letter was issued the day before the FT article came out in print (which enabled them to ask the editor to add the line “After this article was first published online, IWA told the Wards that it accepted the bulk of their claim”. There can be no doubt that this was also a cynical attempt to minimise poor publicity.

“Misquoted what should have been undertaken.” “Should not have been missed.”

Remarkable things, words. So many of them in that letter to @ian-w… and yet somehow, in all those carefully chosen words, not a single one that actually says sorry.

Posted by: @editor

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“Misquoted what should have been undertaken.” “Should not have been missed.”

Remarkable things, words. So many of them in that letter to @ian-w… and yet somehow, in all those carefully chosen words, not a single one that actually says sorry.

Quite possibly the most honest thing they’ve said, then. One has to be sorry to truly say sorry.

Posted by: @ian-w

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@JamesPa the letter from IWA Insurance stated: “This assessment was undertaken by the Claims Manager but their report unfortunately misquoted what should have been undertaken in line with breach of building regulations.” Further on they state: “It has been recognised by IWA that this should not have been missed in our final response to you…”. I read this to be an admission that they made a mistake. 

Thanks and that's very interesting.  I agree its admission, and the key words, if your policy is similar to mine are 'building regulations'.  I reproduce my policy below which I had (perhaps erroneously) previously decided was worthless.  The wording carefully excludes any fault occurring before the supplier continued to trade, which essentially excludes any and all design faults, but there is an exception for the exclusion covering breaches of building regulations.

Actually this exception is potentially very powerful, if difficult to prove, because building regulations require that heating systems are designed to be efficient (I cant recall the exact words).  Bearing this in mind together with your experience may help future claimants.

I applaud you for following through on and apologise that I was pessimistic at the start.  That said I somehow suspect that the clincher for their decision was the FT article, not a genuine recognition that hey should have paid up in the first place which they will carry forward to future cases.