The Fire Assessors went to the house last week, and their basic report was that there was too much damage (too much damage for what, I’m not sure – am getting clarification!). In turn, this means they had to arrange for a Loss Adjuster to go around and do whatever Loss Adjusters do (again, waiting for clarification!), so this lost us a week or so of progress.

The rest of this post is majorly-tweaked from an email from K’s Dad, who’s very very helpfully acting as our contact whilst we’re still out of the country.

The Loss Adjuster went to our house yesterday and met up with the letting agent and reports everything is OK re our claim although they do want to look further into the cause of the fire but this won’t affect us.

As expected it won’t be until the cleaning is completed (about 2 weeks, just for the cleaning) that they will know for sure how extensive the damage is but they do know the upstairs will all need new carpets and re-decoration, the bed 3 ceiling will need replacing, the walls in bed 3 will be re-plastered and everywhere else upstairs sealed. The mattresses will also be replaced.
Until the ceiling is down they don’t know what damage there is in the loft. They weren’t aware that there were some items in the loft that would need to be considered, but they do now.

They will need to see about the bathroom but are quite optimistic although they agree that the grouting is the key. Whatever, it will all be put to rights.

The letting agent has said he is happy to get quotes for the work that needs doing and the loss adjuster will ask him to do this ASAP with our return on the 1st August in mind.

He doesn’t think it’ll take too long to get things sorted but if we’re staying in the house while the work is completed then we’ll get a pro-rata payment for the amount of the house we can’t use for that period. This is a Good Thing.

As it’s not clear when we will be able to take up part habitation we need to decide what we want to do for our first week back. As a guide, we will get the equivalent of our lost rent but the loss adjuster does need to check with the insurance company to confirm this.

The letting agent is also supplying the loss adjuster with a copy of the inventory so he knows what’s there and the condition the place was in.

The loss adjuster was very helpful and came across as very competent. He’s away on holiday for the next two weeks but says a colleague will be able to access the file and answer any queries in the meantime.

We now need to go through the Checkout Report and price up all of the items that the assessor marked as cost to tenant so that these can be proposed to be taken out of the deposit.

All in all, very positive progress has resumed, after a frustrating week with little development!