Underpinning near you

The question a competent investigation answers is not how bad the crack is, but whether the movement will continue if nothing is done to the ground. Where a thirsty tree, a leaking drain or a soakaway discharging beside the footing is drying or softening the soil, dealing with that can arrest the movement and let the building settle into a new equilibrium, after which the masonry is repaired and redecorated. That is a smaller, cheaper and far less disruptive project than rebuilding foundations.

Where the movement cannot be stopped — for example where the tree cannot be removed, or where the support beneath part of the building is genuinely inadequate — underpinning becomes the answer for that part of the structure. Even then it is rarely the whole house. The scheme follows the defect rather than the property boundary.

Removing a mature tree is not automatically the safe option either. Clay that has been kept dry for decades can swell once the tree goes, and heave lifts a building rather than dropping it. That is why the ABI's own advice is to get professional advice from a tree specialist before doing anything to vegetation near the house, and why a scheme sometimes involves managing a tree by reduction rather than felling it.

It starts with a notification to the buildings insurer, not with a contractor. The insurer appoints a loss adjuster, whose job the ABI describes as confirming the circumstances of the claim and the extent of the damage, checking that it is covered by the policy, and telling the insurer what should be paid. The adjuster is appointed and paid by the insurer, so their role is to assess rather than to act for you, and the CILA position is that a policyholder is not charged for the adjuster the insurer sends.

Investigation follows: trial pits to see what the foundation actually is and what it sits on, soil sampling, drainage testing, and a survey of vegetation near the building. Where appropriate, specialists are appointed to establish the cause so that the right repair can be identified. Where movement may still be live, the building is monitored over a period so that engineers can distinguish seasonal movement from progressive movement before designing anything permanent. That monitoring is why subsidence claims often run through more than one summer, and it is not an insurer stalling.

One piece of the machinery is worth knowing if you change insurer mid-claim. Most household insurers subscribe to the ABI's domestic subsidence claims agreement, under which a claim notified within the first eight weeks after a changeover is handled by the previous insurer, and a claim notified between eight weeks and a year is handled by the new insurer with the cost of settlement shared equally between them. Policies also typically carry a higher excess for subsidence than for other perils.

The variables are depth, access and length. What a scheme costs is decided by how far down the design has to go to reach adequate support, how much of the perimeter is involved, whether spoil and concrete can reach the working face by machine or have to go through the house by barrow, what services and drains are in the way, how much temporary support and propping the sequence needs, and how long the site has to stay open for engineering inspection between bays. Ground conditions and the season both affect how fast any of that can proceed.

LokalMatch exists to put you in touch with firms, nothing more. Describe the property, what the investigation has already found and your postcode, and contractors who work in your area reply. There is no charge to homeowners; pros pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not carry out underpinning, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend the businesses that respond, so the engineering design, the building control route and the insurance position remain yours to check.