The Financial Ombudsman and water damage claims
The Financial Ombudsman Service is free, independent, and upheld 38% of buildings insurance complaints in 2025/26 against an average of 30% across all financial products. It also publishes how it approaches the exact arguments insurers use on water claims. This page maps those published positions onto each refusal reason, so you can see what the Ombudsman is likely to say about yours.
Figures and Ombudsman positions verified: 22 September 2026
Key takeaways
- The Financial Ombudsman Service is free, and it says you do not need to pay anyone, including a claims management company, to represent you.
- It upheld 38% of buildings insurance complaints in 2025/26, above its 30% average across all financial products.
- You can refer a complaint once the insurer has issued a final response, or once eight weeks have passed without one, and you then have six months to refer it.
- For complaints referred on or after 1 April 2026 about acts on or after 1 April 2019, it can require a business to pay up to £455,000.
- It publishes guidance on twelve home and buildings insurance topics, six of which bear directly on water damage claims.
- Where an insurer relies on an exclusion such as gradual damage, the Ombudsman says it is the insurer's responsibility to prove the exclusion applies.
What is the Financial Ombudsman Service?
It is the independent body that settles disputes between consumers and financial firms, including home insurers, when the firm's own complaints process has not put things right. It is free for consumers to use, and it decides cases on what it considers fair and reasonable rather than only on the strict wording of a contract.
If you accept its findings, the business must follow its instructions. You do not have to accept, and declining leaves your other legal routes open. It aims to give an initial answer within 90 days and to resolve 90% of cases within six months of taking them on, though a water damage dispute involving technical evidence sits at the slower end of that.
People search for the "insurance ombudsman" or the "home insurance ombudsman", and the Financial Ombudsman Service is the body they mean. There is no separate water damage or buildings insurance ombudsman.
When can you take a water damage claim to the Ombudsman?
There are two gates, and both are simple.
- Complain to the insurer first, and call it a complaint. The word matters, because it starts a formal clock rather than another service conversation.
- Wait for the final response, or for eight weeks. For most complaints the business has up to eight weeks to consider it. Once it issues a final response, or that period passes without one, you can go to the Ombudsman.
Then mind the deadline in the other direction: you need to refer the complaint within six months of the date on the final response. That is the limit people miss most, and it is a hard one. Our guide on how to dispute a water damage claim covers the complaint letter and the steps before this point.
How often does the Ombudsman side with the homeowner?
More often than it does across financial services as a whole, which is the single most useful thing to know before deciding whether a complaint is worth the effort.
| Measure | Figure | Period |
|---|---|---|
| New buildings insurance complaints received | 6,399 | 2025/26 |
| Buildings insurance complaints upheld | 38% | 2025/26 |
| Uphold rate across all financial products | 30% | 2025/26 |
| Top complaint reason: claim declined | 41% | Record quarter, 2024 |
| Second reason: claim delay | 23% | Record quarter, 2024 |
| Uphold rate on claim delay complaints | 57% | Buildings insurance |
| Decisions against the insurer where an agent was involved | 75% | Sampled cases, 2024 |
Every figure above is sourced and dated on our UK water damage claim statistics page. Two of them deserve a second look. A 38% uphold rate means more than one buildings complaint in three results in the insurer being told to do something differently. And the 75% figure covers cases where a loss adjuster or other agent was involved, which is most larger water claims: agents featured in 80% of the sampled cases.
How does the Ombudsman decide the arguments insurers use on water claims?
This is the part almost nobody tells homeowners. The Ombudsman publishes its approach to twelve home and buildings insurance topics, written for insurers rather than for consumers, and six of them bear directly on water damage. You can read what it expects before you write a word of your complaint.
| The insurer says | What the Ombudsman has published |
|---|---|
| The damage was gradual | If an insurer relies on an exclusion, it is the insurer's responsibility to prove the exclusion applies. It is likely to uphold a complaint where the customer could not reasonably have been aware the damage was happening gradually and claimed as soon as they reasonably could. See gradual damage. |
| It is wear and tear | Treated differently, and less favourably for the policyholder. The Ombudsman notes that everything wears out eventually and an insurance policy cannot protect a customer from that. The dispute is therefore about what failed and how, not about the age of the pipe. |
| The property was unoccupied | Unoccupancy limits are usually 30 or 60 days. The Ombudsman takes a broad view of occupation, noting a person can occupy premises without physically being in them, and says a property visited on a reasonably frequent basis was occupied. Where the event happened in the first 30 days of a property being empty, it says the insurer should normally meet the claim. See unoccupied properties. |
| This cash figure is enough | A cash settlement should reflect what it will cost the customer to get the repair done, not what the insurer's own contractors would have charged. Where the insurer repairs instead, the work must fully put the damage right and last. See settling home insurance claims. |
| We will only replace the damaged part of the set | Where an item cannot be matched, the Ombudsman has often said fair compensation is 50% of the cost of replacing the undamaged parts of the set. |
| We are not paying the VAT | It generally accepts excluding VAT from a cash settlement initially, with the VAT paid once the customer shows they have paid it. |
| You must use our builder | Where a customer wants to use their own repairer, the Ombudsman says insurers should usually agree, though responsibility for that builder's work may then shift to the customer. |
| The underground pipe is not covered | Policies generally cover only pipes the policyholder is legally responsible for, so a water company's or a neighbour's pipe falls outside. Damage includes loss of function, so a blocked pipe with no visible damage can still count. See damage to underground pipes. |
| Your sum insured was too low | The Ombudsman publishes separate guidance on underinsurance, and often finds it unfair to cut a home claim proportionately. See our guide to the average clause. |
| It was not a storm | There is dedicated guidance on storm damage, which is the route for a roof leak or rainwater ingress refusal. |
The practical use of that table is to match your complaint to the right argument. A complaint that says the insurer has been unfair is weak. A complaint that says the insurer is relying on a gradual damage exclusion without having proved it applies, and attaches a plumber's report describing a sudden failure, is the same case expressed in the terms the Ombudsman uses.
What can the Ombudsman award?
More than the claim itself, which is the other thing worth knowing before you decide the effort is not worth it.
- The claim put right, which usually means directing the insurer to accept the claim, rescope it, or pay a fair figure.
- Up to £455,000 for complaints referred on or after 1 April 2026 about acts or omissions on or after 1 April 2019. Where the act or omission was before that date, the limit is £205,000. These limits rise most Aprils, and the figure that applies is set by when you refer the complaint.
- Compensation for distress and inconvenience, separate from the financial loss. On water claims this matters, because households often live in a damaged or half-repaired home for months.
- Interest on money that should have been paid sooner. From 1 January 2026 the Ombudsman typically uses a time-weighted average of the Bank of England base rate plus one percentage point, and interest for being deprived of money can be awarded on top of the limit.
Do you need to pay anyone to take a complaint to the Ombudsman?
No, and we will say so plainly even though it is not in our commercial interest. The Ombudsman states that its service is free and that you do not need to pay anyone to represent you, for example a lawyer or a claims management company. A homeowner can write the complaint, refer it and run it.
So where does paid help earn its money on a water claim? Not in filing the complaint. It earns it earlier, in the technical work: establishing and evidencing the cause, scoping the full extent of damage including what is behind the surface, and pricing the reinstatement properly. That is the work that decides what a fair settlement figure even is, and it is why a loss assessor is worth it on larger claims and not on small ones.
Be wary of anyone charging a percentage to submit an Ombudsman complaint
A firm offering to take a refused claim to the Ombudsman for a share of the outcome is charging for something the Ombudsman provides free. Ask what technical work they are doing that you could not, and get the fee basis in writing before you sign.
How do you give the complaint the best chance?
- Name the exclusion or reason the insurer relied on, quoting its own letter.
- Answer that specific reason, rather than restating the whole history. A plumber's or leak detection report on the cause answers most gradual damage and wear and tear refusals.
- Attach the evidence in order: photographs from before clean-up, the report on the cause, your itemised quotes, the insurer's scope of works, and the correspondence timeline. Our evidence checklist covers what to gather.
- Set out the effect on the household if you are asking for distress and inconvenience: the dates, the promises missed, the rooms you could not use.
- Say what you want. A complaint that asks for a specific outcome is easier to uphold than one that asks for fairness.
- Watch the six-month deadline from the final response.
If the claim has not reached a final response yet, start with the reason you were given: a denied claim, an underpaid claim, a delayed claim, or a gradual damage label.
Not sure whether your complaint is worth making?
Send us the insurer's letter and what happened, and we will tell you which argument it is relying on and whether the Ombudsman's published position helps you. The review is free and there is no obligation. Get a free claim review.
We are not an insurer, a loss adjuster, or regulated by the FCA, and we are not connected to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Ombudsman positions on this page are summarised from its own published guidance for businesses, linked above and verified on 22 September 2026; award limits and interest rates change, so check the current figures on its website. This page is general information, not financial or legal advice.