Repair work
If you find that your house has been damaged, try and do two things if possible:

• Prevent the damage form getting any worse. If you do not take any reasonable immediate action, such as turning off the water at the mains, then you may find that the insurer won't pay for any subsequent damage.
• Notify the insurer immediately. Technically the insurance company has to approve the work before it can be carried out. This will often require a loss adjuster to visit your property and assess the damage. In practice, you often get instant approval, especially if the whole area is affected by storm damage or the work is relatively minor.

Who to call
Maintenance, repair and emergency building work are very poorly regulated industries. It can be incredibly expensive to have this type of work carried out by a short-notice contractor, with charges of up to £80 for the first hour and similarly high charges for any further time spent on the work. This can leave you with a large bill for a relatively small piece of work. Since the total cost is likely to be lower than the excess, the policyholder usually ends up paying the whole lot out of their own pocket. On top of that, there is absolutely no guarantee that the work will be of a suitably high standard, meaning further work may be required in the future.

If you need work doing, ask if your insurer can provide you with a list of tradesmen who they have approved. Various other companies may also have lists of approved tradesmen. Your utility providers, credit card companies and even emergency breakdown services all sometimes have such lists. This is still no absolute guarantee of quality but you probably have better odds of achieving a good standard of work, as well as having someone to turn to should it all go wrong. Affiliated or recommended tradesmen often work on fixed charges for specific jobs, so you are less likely to be caught out with a massive bill for a job that uncovered a problem that was also causing some related issue and kept the tradesman occupied for several days and sixty tea breaks.

As a rule, do not use tradesmen who cold call. This is an opportunistic method of generating business, and the best tradesmen usually don't have to resort to this.

Standalone assistance
A number of providers now offer a separate policy to cover minor repair work that would normally not be worth claiming for, due to the excess on your buildings insurance policy. For a premium of between £30 and £100 per year you are covered for a set amount of work that is usually specified in hours (anything from one to five hours work is normal). This covers eventualities such as leaking boilers, overflowing drains and smashed windows. The premium may seem relatively high, but consider how much higher the charges could be if you had to call someone out for emergency repair work. You can obtain this sort of cover from Homelet - click here for further details.