Wear and tear: how to fight the most common rejection

"Wear and tear" is the workhorse of home insurance rejections: cheap for the insurer to assert, expensive for you to disprove, or so it looks. In fact the Financial Ombudsman Service applies a structured three-question test to storm claims, publishes exactly how it thinks, and puts the burden of proving deterioration on the insurer. Declined claims were the single biggest reason for buildings insurance complaints in 2024/25, and buildings complaints hit a 10-year high of 7,321 (Financial Ombudsman Service). This guide turns the test the ombudsman uses into the evidence checklist you need.

Why insurers reach for wear and tear

Home insurance covers events (storm, escape of water, fire, theft), not the slow decline of building materials. Every roof, flashing strip and sealant bead deteriorates, so on almost any damaged component an insurer can point to some age-related imperfection and call the damage gradual. The rejection often arrives after a loss adjuster's visit, phrased as "damage consistent with wear and tear over time".

What that phrasing hides: consistency is not causation. The question is not whether your roof was ageing; it is whether an insured event was the main cause of this damage. That distinction is exactly what the ombudsman's test probes.

The ombudsman's three-question storm test

When a storm claim rejection reaches the Financial Ombudsman Service, it asks three questions (FOS storm damage guidance):

1. Do we agree that storm conditions occurred on or around the date the damage is said to have happened?
2. Is the damage claimed for consistent with what we generally see as storm damage?
3. Were storm conditions the main cause of the damage, or were there other factors that mean the damage might have happened anyway?

A yes to all three means the claim should generally succeed. Most disputes are lost or won on questions one and three, and each has its own evidence.

Question 1: was there a storm?

Insurers commonly define a storm as gusts of at least 48 knots (55mph), torrential rain of at least 25mm per hour, or heavy snow, and reject claims where local station data shows less (MoneyWeek on the 55mph definition). Two things blunt that:

• Where the policy does not define "storm", the ombudsman applies its own broader view: violent winds usually accompanied by rain, hail or snow, and it has said there can be a storm without high winds, where rain, hail or snow alone was severe.
• Even where the policy quotes Beaufort Scale figures, the ombudsman has ruled that recorded wind speed is not the deciding factor. In a published case, an insurer rejected a claim because winds had not reached Beaufort force 10 (55–63mph); the ombudsman upheld the complaint, noting that localised gusts far from the weather station and wind effects created by building layouts can damage property below that threshold (FOS case study).

The ombudsman checks weather using historic data providers, currently EuroTempest and WeatherNet, alongside your own account of conditions. Note the date and time damage appeared, photograph conditions if you can, and keep local news reports of the weather that day.

Question 2: is the damage storm-shaped?

Some damage patterns read as storm damage on sight: ridge tiles lifted, felt torn, fence panels flattened, TV aerials down. Others invite scepticism: damp patches that look established, damage on a sheltered elevation. Dated photographs from immediately after the event, before any repairs, are the cheapest strong evidence you will ever gather.

Question 3: was the storm the main cause?

This is where "your roof was old" lives. The legal idea is proximate cause: the dominant, effective cause of the damage. Age or minor deterioration making a component more vulnerable does not stop the storm being the main cause; the insurer must show the damage would have happened anyway, storm or no storm. That is an evidential claim, and it is theirs to prove, not yours to disprove (FOS on gradual damage).

Gradual damage: the genuine exclusion and its edges

Sometimes the insurer is right: a slow leak staining a ceiling over months, or pointing eroded over a decade, is deterioration, not an event. But the edges matter. Where a hidden gradual process you could not reasonably have known about produces sudden damage, such as a concealed pipe leak that finally collapses a ceiling, the resulting damage can still be covered. The ombudsman's published approach turns on what you could reasonably have known and when. If your rejection letter says "gradual", make the insurer say gradual since when, and how you were supposed to know.

The evidence checklist

Two practical notes. First, ask the insurer for the specific policy wording relied on, in writing, because storm definitions vary and some are far more generous than the 55mph convention. If matching the rejection letter to your actual policy wording is the hard part, you can upload your policy to Roci and see the storm definition, the exclusions and the conditions that apply to your claim in plain terms. Second, get your own trade report before authorising permanent repairs, or you make the causation question unanswerable.

If the insurer will not move

Reconsideration first: send the report and weather data, ask them to review the decision against the three questions above. If the answer is still no, raise a formal complaint; the structure and the CIDRA/connection-to-loss arguments are in how to complain to your insurer. The insurer has eight weeks; after their final response you have six months to go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, where storm-claim rejections are one of the most commonly overturned categories. The wider picture is in what your chances actually are.

For the full escalation map from any rejection reason, start at home insurance claim rejected? What to do next.