Nationwide Home Insurance Advise on Garden Content Cover: Warnings by Nationwide Home Insurance telling people to check their level of garden contents cover may not cause the fear they seem to expect. Their study found that a third of people polled valued the contents of their garden to be between £250 and £1,000. To this date I personally have not found an insurer that offers any less coverage than the £1,000 mark with many offering double that with no extra charge.
The warning continued regarding the "easy pickings" of garden tools and furniture this time of year as people tend to leave them out in the good weather. They advised people to anchor their ornaments and furniture to make them difficult to steal, but when you consider that vandalism is the crime of choice these days for bored teens (constituting 37% of all crime at one point in North Ayrshire) even cementing your gnomes to your driveway might still have you making a claim on your policy.
An article by Esure last year noted that 1.4 million shed thefts took place that year but with many insurers refusing to pay out as the policy holders had not checked through their policies to note that to be covered, the shed needed to have a lock on it. Many policies include terms and conditions that state there must be evidence of a break in to qualify for an insurance claim.
This report by Nationwide comes not long after their survey which revealed that 20% of homeowners did not have buildings insurance. With the home generally the biggest investment by any household not protecting it's value from floods or other damage does seem ludicrous. The report detailed trends for insuring property across the UK covering the best and the worst such as the 35% of people in the North East that do not have buildings insurance, right across to 96% of the Welsh actually making sure they contents were covered.
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NCD News: Nationwide Home Insurance - 01.04.08
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