Storm Damage Claim Refused? What the Ombudsman Actually Decides

The letter says the gusts in your area reached 42mph, that the threshold for a storm is 55mph, and that your claim is therefore declined. Or it says the damage was caused by wear and tear rather than the weather. Either way it reads as final, and most people stop there.

It is not final. The Financial Ombudsman Service reviews these refusals for free, and its reasoning is published, decision by decision, so you can read exactly how it thinks before you spend an hour writing a complaint. We read nine published decisions on refused roof storm claims, four of them from 2026, along with the ombudsman's own guidance. The pattern that emerges is not the one insurers imply.

At a Glance: Challenging a Refused Storm Claim

The Three Questions That Decide Every Storm Claim

The ombudsman does not weigh up a claim in the round. It asks three questions in a fixed order, and its consumer page puts them like this: "Do we agree that there was a storm on the date the damage happened? Is the damage consistent with what we generally see as storm damage? Were storm conditions the main cause of the damage, or did other factors mean the damage might have happened anyway?"

The rule attached to them matters as much as the questions. In decision DRN-5253224 the ombudsman put it at its plainest: "if the answer to any of these questions is 'no' the claim won't succeed." So a refusal you can defeat on question one still fails if you cannot get past question three, which is where most roof claims are actually lost.

Wind Speed Is Not the Test

The 55mph figure is the insurance industry's convention, not the ombudsman's rule. The Association of British Insurers publishes it, defining a storm as including "wind speeds with gusts of at least 55mph", equivalent to Force 10 on the Beaufort Scale, and insurers copy it into their wordings. Advantage, Accredited and Admiral all use almost identical language in the decisions we read.

The ombudsman declines to apply it strictly. In DRN-5253224 it said "this service takes the view that it wouldn't always be fair to apply these thresholds strictly because damage can be caused by winds under 55mph. For example, the Beaufort Scale says 'slight structural damage' can occur at wind speeds of 47mph or more." In one of its own case studies it went further: "we also didn't think wind speed should be a deciding factor in a storm damage case."

Two further points from DRN-4123830 are worth quoting back at an insurer. First, averaging is not allowed. The insurer argued that two conflicting weather records should be averaged, and the ombudsman refused: "I don't think this would be a fair approach as individual gusts of high wind can cause considerable damage. By taking an average, the impact of these gusts would be ignored." Second, the ombudsman looked back over a fortnight rather than at a single day. In DRN-4952436 its weather data showed a 48mph gust on the day the damage was reported, 55mph fifteen days earlier and 52mph a week earlier, and that wider window is what carried question one.

Be careful about the mirror image, though. In DRN-5253224 the insurer's booklet contained no definition of a storm at all, and applied the 55mph figure anyway. The ombudsman allowed it, on the basis that the criteria were "consistent with the Association of British Insurers (ABI) storm information and is standard across the insurance industry". A missing definition in your own policy is not automatically a point in your favour.

Who Has to Prove What

This is the single most useful thing to know, and few refusal letters mention it. If the insurer is relying on an exclusion, wear and tear, gradual damage or lack of maintenance, the burden of proving it is theirs. DRN-4952436 sets out both limbs: the policyholder must show there was an insured event, "but where an insurer relies on an exclusion in the policy to decline a claim then the onus is on them to show the exclusion applies."

The ombudsman's guidance to insurers is more pointed still, and names the shortcut it sees most often: "Sometimes we see reports where the roof hasn't been inspected properly and the insurer has relied on an aerial photo. Unless the photo clearly shows deterioration, and this is explained in the report, then we may not be persuaded that you've shown the exclusion fairly applies." Its consumer page reduces it to one line: "the insurer has to prove that the exclusion applies, for example with an inspection report."

Need a roofer's report the ombudsman will take seriously? Find local roofers who will inspect the roof properly and put their findings in writing at localroofer.directory. A report from someone who physically got onto the roof carries real weight.

Why Claims Actually Fail, and What Wins

The honest headline is that a good share of these complaints succeed. Buildings insurance ran a 38% uphold rate across 6,399 complaints in 2025/26 and 33% in the quarter to June 2026, against 26% across all financial products. Roughly two in five buildings insurance complaints are decided in the consumer's favour. That is worth eight weeks of patience.

But the decisions that fail, fail for reasons you can see coming, and the test is stricter than most people expect. DRN-6118344 states it as well as any: "There can be no doubt that Storm Darragh contributed to the damage here. But that's not the test." The insurer must show that the dominant cause was something other than the wind, and the ombudsman spelled out that "proximate cause doesn't mean the last cause, it means the dominant, effective or efficient cause".

Maintenance Is What Kills a Roof Claim

DRN-6121614 is the case to read if you want to understand why claims lose. The gusts were over 80mph, and the damage to the slate roof, lead guttering and ridging was accepted as "consistent with damage that might be seen following the wind speeds in operation". Questions one and two were both answered yes. The claim still failed, on three documents the homeowner supplied himself. His claim form answered "no" to whether the roof had been inspected or maintained by a qualified roofer in the last ten years. His own roofer's quote conceded that three of the items "may have been partly caused by lack of maintenance". And his 2021 pre purchase survey had recorded "several chipped, broken and slipped slates", with no evidence anything was done about them before the storm.

A related trap appears in DRN-5633467, where the homeowner's own home emergency contractor wrote up the roof as "defective", describing cracked and missing cement around the valley. The first document on the insurer's file described the roof as defective, and it came from the homeowner's side.

The ombudsman's guidance names the losing scenario openly: it is unlikely to uphold a complaint where "the flat roof was already in a poor state of repair at the time of the storm and this would (or should) have been clear to the customer" and "the storm merely highlighted this existing problem". It also adds the fair caveat that imperfect condition is not fatal on its own: "In some cases we see it's clear the property wasn't in a perfect condition before the storm. But that won't necessarily mean the damage was a result of wear and tear."

The Evidence That Actually Persuades

The ombudsman tells insurers what works: "Clear and detailed reports to explain the expert's thinking, supported by photos of the damage, tend to be the most persuasive evidence." In practice, four things moved decisions this year.

A roofer who physically inspected the roof beats a surveyor who did not. In DRN-6032556, which was upheld for £17,200, the insurer's surveyor declined an invitation to go up on the scaffolding and took photographs from the ground with a camera pole. The ombudsman found the homeowner's roofer persuasive because "he physically inspected the roof". Conversely, a ground level survey is next to worthless: DRN-5253224 turned partly on a survey that examined the roof "from ground level" so the felt and battens were never assessed.

Your own photographs count, even when the professionals miss the damage. In DRN-4952436 the homeowner's photograph clearly showed missing tiles beside a Velux window, and comparison with the surveyor's own photographs showed the same tiles absent, which made it "not clear why this wasn't included in the surveyor's report". Photographs taken the day after are ideal.

A neighbour's matching damage is genuine corroboration, used in DRN-4123830, though never as the whole case. And an insurer's report that admits its own limits can be dismissed: in one case study an engineer called his work "a limited assessment", and the ombudsman held the insurer would need "more persuasive evidence".

One practical note, because a lot of advice on this is wrong: there is no free source of historic gust readings for your postcode, and you do not need one. The ombudsman obtains the data itself, telling insurers it uses "historic weather data providers, we currently use EuroTempest and WeatherNet". Ask your insurer for the weather report it relied on.

Regional Differences in What a Refused Claim Costs You

Neither the ombudsman nor the ABI publishes any regional breakdown of storm claims, payouts or refusals, and anyone quoting one is inventing it. We checked the 2025/26 annual data for every UK nation and region and found nothing. What does vary regionally is the repair bill you are left carrying while you argue.

MyJobQuote's roof leak guide, updated 17 September 2026, puts London and the South East at "20 to 30% more than the North", with an emergency call-out adding £100 to £300. Get A Roofer's guide, last updated 18 December 2025, publishes a fuller spread for emergency call-outs, from £200 to £650 in the North East and Yorkshire up to £300 to £900 or more in London and the South East, with Scotland, Wales and the Midlands in between. These are commercial estimating sites rather than authorities, and their positions do not reconcile into a single figure, so treat the spread as a spread.

For scale, the ABI reported on 17 February 2026 that "the average storm damage payout in 2025 reached £2,450. This is £750 more than 2024."

Frequently Asked Questions

My insurer says the wind was under 55mph. Is that the end of it?

No. The 55mph figure comes from the ABI and from insurers' own wordings, not from the ombudsman, which has said it "wouldn't always be fair to apply these thresholds strictly because damage can be caused by winds under 55mph", citing the Beaufort Scale's "slight structural damage" at 47mph or more. It has also refused to let insurers average conflicting readings, and has looked back a fortnight rather than at a single day. That said, wind speed alone rarely decides a case: causation does.

How long do I have to take a refused claim to the ombudsman?

Complain to the insurer first. It then has 8 weeks to issue a final response, after which you can go to the ombudsman whether or not it has replied. Once you have the final response you have 6 months to refer the complaint, counted in calendar months, so a response sent on 7 May gives you until 7 November. There is also an outer limit of 6 years from the problem, or 3 years from when you reasonably became aware of it.

Does it cost anything, and do I need a claims company?

It is free and you do not need one. The ombudsman says "our service is free and easy to use. You don't need a lawyer or anyone else to represent you." Since 1 April 2025 a professional representative is charged £250 to refer a case, and claims management fees for financial services claims are capped at 15% to 30% of the award. Doing it yourself costs nothing and loses you nothing.

What if the ombudsman rules against me, or I disagree with the decision?

You can reject the decision, but then "the business doesn't need to do anything", and if you do not reply in time you are usually treated as having rejected it. There is no appeal to another ombudsman and no appeal to court simply because you disagree; only judicial review, which looks at process rather than the facts. If you accept, the insurer is bound, but you will most likely lose the option of suing over the same complaint. Worth knowing before you accept: the usual remedy is an order to reconsider the claim under the policy terms, not an order to pay out.