It is very difficult to estimate, at any one time, how many unoccupied buildings there are in the UK. The first problem we face is how do you define unoccupied? The majority of commercial insurance companies agree that to be defined as unoccupied, a building needs to be empty for more than 30 days. The second issue is that there is no central register of empty properties. You do not need to tell any government or local authority body if a building is empty.
The reason insurers have 30 days as the "cut off" point, is because very few people go on holiday for more than two or three weeks. So, the insurers say anything up to 30 days is considered to be occupied, even though technically it is unattended.
For some types of home insurance you can get up to 60 days before then consider this to be unoccupied, but in the main it is 30 days.
It is what happens to you insurance cover when a property becomes unoccupied that you need to be careful of. We will look at commercial building insurance because this is the type of cover that can have the most restrictions applied. When a property is tenanted, occupied or let you can expect to get quite wide cover. This will include, for example, fire, storm, theft, malicious damage, glass and loss of rental income cover. In addition you can get accidental damage cover but this does depend on which insurer provides you with the cover.
However, when a building is empty, insurers tend to either restrict the cover or increase the premium, or in some cases they do both. It is understandable that some people consider that their commercial property insurance premium should reduce when a building is empty as there is less activity and less likelihood of damage.
Insurers do base their decisions on their past experiences and statistics. Some of them of course do take things a bit too far and charge more than others, this is what a free market economy is all about. But why do they do this? The simple reason is that some insurance companies are more risk averse than others. Their statistics show that empty buildings do have arson and malicious attacks, they do suffer from break ins (for the copper pipe work) and they do have less care applied to them, which means they are more susceptible to weather damage.
Therefore, you may find that one insurer will restrict cover to four particular perils, fire, lightning, explosion and aircraft. More commonly referred to as F.L.E.A cover.
Other companies though are happier to provide slightly wider cover, which can include storm, theft and malicious damage. You will not get glass or accidental damage cover and damage from burst pipes is only provided if the water tank is drained.
There are two things you must do. Firstly, ensure that your broker or insurer is made aware if any building that they insure is unoccupied. And secondly, ask your broker what level of cover you are getting if the building is empty. If it is only F.L.E.A cover, then you should consider, for the payment of a bit of extra premium asking for them to get you a quote for wider cover.