An electric car malfunctioned and crashed into the side of one of our resident's homes back in March 2024, smashing up a lot of the brickwork and causing concerns about the structural stability and security of the house.
Many months later, we have a positive outcome…
The neighbour's car had struck the side of the house at Birkby Close, Leicester and skidded along the wall until it hit the bay window, which was severely damaged. This also caused cracking to the external brickwork, and internal walls to the kitchen and bedrooms. As a result, the resident was temporarily moved into different accommodation for fears that it could have caused serious structural damage to the building. That's when the Major Works team came in to organise the repairs, which started in June 2024.
Repairs included: the bay window having to be rebuilt, fixing all the cracks, and redoing the internal decoration in the affected rooms. A structural engineer was used to check the building and advise on repairs. However, as the costs were below our insurance excess, PA Housing was left to pay for it all!
That's why I decided to pursue a separate claim against the car owner’s insurance company. This claim took several months to resolve, but after this lengthy process, we had a good result and PA were paid £17,000 to offset the costs of the repairs to the resident's property.
The resident completed a customer satisfaction survey which told us that they were happy with the level of service provided and very satisfied with the quality of the work completed. They were also very satisfied with PA Housing’s services as a landlord.
With a lot of hard work and perseverance, we got a great result out of a situation that could have very easily been a metaphorical car crash as well as a real one.
Take a look at the photos below, which show the full extent of the damage to the walls:
