Storms spark rogue builder warning

AXA has issued a warning about rogue builders offering to carry out repair jobs in the wake of this week’s storms.

AXA Personal Lines head of household claims Christine Matthews said the insurer was aware of builders making direct opportunistic approaches to homeowners in the worst-hit areas by tradesmen offering to repair storm damage. 

She said: “Sometimes this work can be expensive, of poor quality, carried out by unqualified people or never properly finished. Customers therefore need to be extremely careful and should of course always speak to us if they have any concerns.”

Scotland was the worst-hit part of the UK, but England, Wales and Northern Ireland have also been badly affected. Homes in Nottinghamshire were left without power yesterday, for example, while 100 mile-per-hour winds brought down trees in Cumbria.

The high winds in the UK have been caused by a series of winter storm systems sweeping northern Europe. Windstorm Ulli was responsible for the high winds around 3 January, while yesterday’s gales were caused by Windstorm Andrea. Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands have also been hit by high winds and flooding.

Matthews said: “Following further extreme weather conditions over the past few days, we have continued to see large volumes of incoming calls and claims on the household side. The majority of them are still relatively small but we have had some larger losses. We are working hard to resolve claims for all our customers as quickly as possible.

“Our actions include drafting in additional claims handling staff from other parts of the AXA group to assist and introducing overtime with extended weekend hours to ensure customers receive the best quality service at this difficult time.”