Hastings Direct’s failures forced my family out of our home

A leak beneath our fridge-freezer last winter caused extensive damage but there’s still no functioning kitchen Eight months after reporting a leak to our home insurer, Hastings Direct, my husband and I and our two-year-old are still effectively homeless. Last winter, we discovered that an unnoticed leak beneath our fitted fridge-freezer had caused extensive damage to the floorboards of our kitchen/living room. Since then we have experienced significant delays, poor communication and conflicting information, and what I believe is a failure by the insurer and its appointed contractors to properly manage the claim. A promised call-back never materialised because call staff failed to log the claim. Work finally commenced more than five months later. The contractors removed all the kitchen units, despite the fact that most were undamaged and were not included in the schedule of works, and Hastings now wants us to contribute £8,000 to replace them. There is still no functioning kitchen in the property, which means we cannot return home. We initially agreed to move into temporary accommodation for what we were told would be approximately two weeks. It’s now been nearly three months.