Alan Orbell has been affected by the collapse of a house down Langford Road - he has now been told that his insurance is invalid because apparently his home had latent defects. His home is the one next door to the collapsed house and him and his family have been living in air BnB's for the past year. He is desperate to get home again but needs the structure of the side wall of his home to be repaired.
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00:00 Camera's running. Oh hi my name is Alan Orbell and I'm here in Langford Road
00:05 Portsmouth just off New Road. This is my family so my better half Sam, my oldest
00:10 Freya and my youngest little pickle is Orla. Okay so what's
00:18 happened here please? Well as you can tell behind us the houses that collapsed the
00:24 original one went in December of 22 and we were allowed back in after being
00:30 originally removed for three days. We were then told to keep an eye on our house.
00:34 Sorry Alan this is your house just behind you here. Yep yeah thank you.
00:38 We were allowed back in after the initial collapse and then we got to New
00:43 Year's Eve where we were told we had to keep an eye on everything make sure
00:46 there's no other cracks and stuff or anything get worse. On New Year's Eve 27
00:51 started to collapse on the further side of the wall obviously the property is no
00:54 longer there and on the 8th of January 2023 we were removed from our home under
01:01 the Dangerous Buildings Act. Okay so what's been happening since then?
01:06 Well we've moved four times, the insurance company we've had a bit of an
01:12 issue with them about two weeks after being removed from our home they've said
01:16 we've no longer got claim that's due to underlying defects in the area. We've got
01:22 evidence and other parties involved that obviously suggests that none of the
01:27 damage to our house or any reason why we've been removed to my house is
01:31 anything found under the floor or what was suggested caused the issue in the
01:35 first place. Okay so you've got an issue then with your insurance company so
01:40 they're basically they're saying your insurance is invalid is that correct?
01:45 We've been given the complaints process the day that they told us we no longer
01:50 had a claim and the Ombudsman details and we've been chasing that for the last
01:55 nine months. Okay okay is there I mean when we first met this morning you said
02:01 that you know progress has been slow on all sorts of fronts so you were kind of
02:05 implying that the insurance was one of them? Yep. So we started the Ombudsman process.
02:10 Basically it's everything that we've tried and we're at an end of
02:16 every opportunity we've got in front of us and we're waiting on everybody so
02:21 it's the Ombudsman process we got told it was a long process to start off with
02:24 and we've finally got been released that we were a priority case so we've finally