In England the flat above has to repair their own leaking pipe or appliance, but they only pay for your damage if they were negligent. Otherwise the block buildings policy usually covers your ceiling and decoration, your contents policy covers your belongings, and the lease decides who carries the excess. Get the source found and written down first.
There is a brown ring spreading across your ceiling, or water is dripping through the light fitting, and it is not raining. The flat above says they cannot see anything wrong. You want the water to stop and you want to know whose bill this is. The paying part has clearer rules than most people expect, so here they are in order.
This guide is for England only, and it is general guidance rather than legal advice, because your lease and the wording of each policy decide the outcome in your building.
Fixing the leak and paying for the damage are two different questions
A lease splits a building into parts. The flat you own, called your demise, usually includes the rooms, the plaster, the fittings, and the pipes and appliances that serve only your flat. Everything that serves more than one flat, such as the roof, a shared soil stack, a communal tank or a riser, is normally the freeholder’s to maintain.
So if a bath seal, a washing machine hose or a radiator valve upstairs has failed, stopping and repairing it is the upstairs owner’s job. The ruined ceiling below is in your demise, so making that good falls to you, your insurer, or the block’s insurer, unless the cost can be passed back to whoever caused it. That is the negligence question.
Who pays turns on negligence, not on where the water came from
This is the part that surprises people. The upstairs owner is not automatically liable for your damage because the water came from their flat. In England you can only recover from a neighbour if you can show they were negligent: they caused the leak, for example by leaving a bath running, or they knew about a fault, or should have known, and did nothing about it. A drip caught in a bucket for three weeks is negligence. A hose that split overnight with no warning is bad luck.
Where there is no negligence, your losses go through insurance. Where there is, your insurer will usually pay you first and then pursue the upstairs occupier. Either way, you claim on your own policies first. Waiting for the neighbour to admit fault is the slowest route there is.
The block policy, your contents policy and the excess
In most converted houses and purpose-built blocks, the freeholder or a management company insures the whole building under one policy, paid for through the service charge. That block policy normally covers escape of water damage to the fabric of both flats: ceiling, plaster, decoration, drying out and fitted units. It does not pay to repair the pipe that leaked, and it does not cover belongings.
You cannot usually claim on the block policy yourself. You report the leak to the freeholder or managing agent, and they open the claim. A good block policy also carries trace and access cover for the cost of finding the source. Our guide on what trace and access insurance pays for explains what that does and does not include.
Your carpets, furniture and electronics go on your own contents policy. The upstairs occupier’s contents policy may include a liability section that responds where negligence is shown, but many do not.
Then there is the excess. Escape of water often carries its own, higher excess on a block policy, and the lease decides who pays it. Some leases let the freeholder recover it from the leaseholder whose flat the leak came from. Others put it through the service charge so every flat pays a share. If you are asked to pay the whole excess for damage you did not cause, ask which clause of the lease allows it.
| Cost | Who usually pays | What it depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Repairing the leaking pipe, seal or appliance | The upstairs leaseholder, or the freeholder for a communal pipe | Whose demise the source sits in |
| Your ceiling, plaster, decoration and fitted units | The block buildings policy | The escape of water section and its excess |
| Your belongings | Your contents policy; the upstairs occupier only if negligent | Your cover, and proof of negligence |
| Finding the source | Trace and access cover on the block or your own policy | Whether the cover is on the schedule and the limit |
| The excess | The leaseholder the leak came from, or all flats via the service charge | The wording of the lease |
What to do today
- Make your flat safe. Switch off the lighting circuit if water is anywhere near a fitting, catch drips, move furniture and lift rugs. If the ceiling is sagging, keep out from under it and read our guide to a ceiling bulging with water before you touch it.
- Photograph everything with times. The ceiling, the drips, your belongings, and the clock. Keep a written note from day one.
- Knock upstairs. Ask them to check under the bath, behind the washing machine and around the toilet, and to turn their stop tap off if they cannot find anything.
- Tell the freeholder or managing agent in writing the same day. They open the block claim, and they usually have a power under the lease to get into a flat to investigate. If the flat above is let, tell the owner or letting agent as well as the tenant.
- Notify your contents insurer before you throw anything away or pay for permanent repairs. The order of events in our guide to claiming for a water leak applies here too.
- Get the source found and written down. Insurers expect you to take reasonable steps to stop the leak and limit the damage, and a report that names the cause does both.
Holiday apartments and empty flats
Cornwall has a particular version of this problem. Seafront blocks in Newquay, converted villas above the harbour in Falmouth, apartments over the shops in St Ives: many of the flats are holiday lets or second homes, and the owner upstairs may be two hundred miles away. A changeover cleaner is often the only person who goes in, and a slow leak under a bath can run for weeks between bookings.
That changes the practical steps rather than the legal ones. The managing agent or letting company becomes your first call, because they hold keys and contact details. Put the report in writing with the date, because “nobody told me” is the defence you are removing. If you own a holiday apartment yourself, a monthly meter reading in the quiet season is the cheapest early warning there is, and our Newquay leak detection page covers the area where we see this most.
Finding which flat it really is
Water travels. It runs along a joist, follows a pipe run, and comes through the ceiling a room away from where it escaped. In a converted Victorian terrace the pipework can wander between demises. So “we cannot find anything” from upstairs is often true, and it can even be the wrong flat altogether, or a communal stack.
The search starts in your flat, because that is where the evidence is. Thermal imaging on the ceiling shows the shape and direction of the wet area: a warm plume points at a hot pipe or heating circuit, a cold patch at a waste or a cold feed. Moisture mapping shows how far the water has spread and where it is freshest. That usually narrows the source to one or two possibilities before anyone goes upstairs.
Then, with the neighbour’s agreement or the agent’s authority, the work moves upstairs. Baths, shower trays, toilet pans and appliance connections are tested under load, because a seal that only fails when someone stands in the shower is a common answer. Pressure testing shows which circuit is losing water, and where a pipe is buried in the floor, tracer gas or acoustic listening pins the joint down so one board comes up rather than the whole floor.
The result is a trace and access report naming the source, the cause and the extent of the damage. Both insurers then work from the same document, and the negligence question gets answered by evidence rather than argument across a landing. We provide leak detection across Cornwall, and flats are a large part of what we do along the coast.
If you rent your flat
Tell your landlord or letting agent straight away, in writing. Under section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 a landlord must keep the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation and heating in repair, so a leak into a rented flat is theirs to chase with the freeholder. Your belongings are still yours to insure.
Frequently asked questions
Is the flat above liable for a water leak into my flat?
Not automatically. In England the upstairs owner must repair their own leaking pipe or appliance, but they only pay for your damage if they were negligent, for example by ignoring a known drip. Without negligence, your ceiling and decoration go through the block buildings policy and your belongings through your own contents insurance.
Who pays the excess when a leak comes from the flat above?
The lease decides. Some leases allow the freeholder to recover the escape of water excess from the leaseholder whose flat the leak came from. Others put it through the service charge so every flat contributes. If you are asked to pay the full excess for damage you did not cause, ask which clause of the lease permits it.
What if the flat above says they have no leak?
They may be right, because water travels along joists and pipe runs and can surface a room away from the source, or come from a communal pipe. Report it to the managing agent in writing and arrange a trace and access survey. Thermal imaging and moisture mapping in your flat usually narrow the source before anyone goes upstairs.
Does the block insurance cover my furniture and carpets?
No. The block buildings policy covers the fabric of the building, such as ceilings, plaster, decoration and fitted units. Your carpets, furniture and belongings are covered by your own contents insurance, if you have it. The upstairs occupier’s liability cover might respond if they were negligent, but many policies do not include it.
Find out which flat it is
Water through the ceiling and nobody upstairs can see a thing? We trace the source without pulling ceilings down and give you a report both insurers can work from.
