‘A fire ruined our home and LV left us in limbo for over a year'
Sixteen months have passed since Kaja and Dean Cordwell were forced to leave their home after their washing machine burst into flames, destroying their kitchen and leaving their eldest child's training cups covered in ink-black soot.
A then-pregnant Kaja, 31, envisaged they would be back home before the birth of their second child – after all, they had building and contents cover with Liverpool Victoria (LV).
But more than a year later, their newborn has yet to see the family home. The couple is still living in a rented flat, their belongings are still in a storage facility and their home is still scarred by smoke and water damage. Now, LV is allegedly threatening to stop paying their rent.
The insurer claims the couple has reached the limits of its cover for temporary accommodation, while a loss surveyor representing Kaja and Dean argues that LV only has itself to blame for delays. For the Cordwells, a seemingly simple insurance scheme has unravelled into a long nightmare.
'I was due to give birth and LV tried to put us in a room above a pub'
It all started with a washing machine, bought in 2021 when Kaja and Dean together with their first child moved from Bristol to Chepstow, Wales. Twice in the run-up to Christmas 2023, the machine 'started making weird noises', Kaja recalls. An engineer was dispatched both times and the machine was repaired.
But the third time the machine malfunctioned, in January 2024, it tripped the fuse and caught fire. 'The fire was not severe,' Kaja says. 'Obviously we called the fire brigade straight away.'
Firefighters stormed through the property, forcing open doors to let the smoke out. 'The damage to the house was mainly from the fire brigade,' admits Kaja. 'Water was everywhere, and the smoke travelled upstairs, staining the ceilings.'
'We kind of walked out in our socks, with the baby and the dog,' says Kaja. Much of the couple's belongings, including their toddler's training cups, were blackened with soot.
Kaja and Dean contacted their insurer, LV, and spent two nights with a neighbour while they waited for a loss adjuster. Two days later, a representative from Woodgate & Clark appeared, cheerily informing them that the repairs would take around three months.
For Kaja, who was heavily pregnant, the sense of relief faded once LV started suggesting temporary accommodation options. 'I was due to give birth in two weeks, and they were suggesting a room above a service station, or a pub,' she recalls.
The couple's insurance policy covered them for up to £50,000 in accommodation costs, so Kaja and Dean decided to spend a week in an Airbnb and invoice LV for the cost instead.
During that week, Kaja found a family home for rent in Caldicot via Facebook Marketplace. 'We had Woodgate & Clark's blessing, and I guess it saved them a job,' she says. 'We were still working under the assumption this would only be for three months.'
Two weeks after the fire, Kaja gave birth. There were complications with her daughter, who was born with a genetic condition called facial asymmetry, which saw Kaja 'in and out of the hospital for two months'.
At the time, the Cordwells still had faith in their insurers to restore their house, but something was off. It took six weeks for a cleaning crew to attend the property, by which time the water damage left by the fire brigade had worsened. 'Our neighbours did as much as they could to mop it up, but there's only so much you can do,' Kaja says.
The Cordwells' possessions were removed and put into storage, and to this day, the family has had no access to them. They had to re-buy many essentials as weeks stretched into months.
'We kind of live in this crazy nowhere land, like when you're camping, you think you're going to make do,' Kaja says. 'Because there's no point in investing in new cutlery if you're going to be home any day now.'
A breakdown in relations
Two months after the fire, contractors visited the home to talk to the family about the repairs, but LV's approach had already begun to unravel.
'The cleaning company hadn't done a cleaning certificate to confirm the property was dry and able to be worked on,' says Dean. 'It took them until August to get this moisture reading.'
Meanwhile, Dean, who runs his own consultancy company, was scouting suppliers suggested by LV to choose a new kitchen. But the builders soon walked out after a breakdown in relations.
A spokesman for LV admitted that the delays were due 'to a variety of factors', but primarily blamed the couple's dispute with contractors on their desire for additional works, which included remodelling a bathroom, installing fitted wardrobes, attic hatch alterations and bespoke bunk beds.
Kaja and Dean maintain that the quality and extent of the work were simply inadequate, and in September, they appointed an independent loss assessor from Morgan Clark.
'It is accurate that the client had mentioned to them a wish to make the best of a bad situation by incorporating some fairly minor changes within the like-for-like reinstatement works that the insurer was due to fund,' says Matt Rawliingson, of the firm.
'But I can assure you that these types of changes – things like re-working the layout of the kitchen units, for example – are things that routinely happen on insurance claims as most people will want to make improvements as the works progress.'
The couple's already-strained relationship with LV and Woodgate & Clark deteriorated further after Rawliingson entered the frame. Kaja and Dean claim representatives from either company were hard to contact, and describe five-person email chains between contractors, claims managers and loss adjusters.
LV denies they were incommunicative, however, the couple claim that in 16 months there was just one meeting over Teams.
'My belief is that the initial contractors used [the additional works] as an excuse to get out of an uncomfortable situation that didn't suit them,' says Rawliingson.
'I think because the loss adjuster was also finding it hard to meet the client's expectations, when their contractor blamed Dean and Kaja for the breakdown, she did not find that hard to believe and swallowed their explanation whole without actually verifying whether what they had said was accurate.'
Rawliingson roped in a RICS chartered surveyor to assess the damage. The quote he provided was 'much higher than the cost our network contractors could have carried the work out for', LV says.
The insurer offered the couple a cash settlement based on their own assessor's rates, which would have left Kaja and Dean on the hook for the rest of the bill. Insurers often pay contractors lower rates in exchange for regular work, meaning quotes they provide are often cheaper, explains Rawliingson.
A year after the fire, no repairs had been done. In February, an exasperated Kaja and Dean contacted their local MP, Catherine Fookes, who has continued to support them ever since.
'This has been an incredibly distressing time for Kaja, Dean and their family. No one should be left in limbo for over a year in temporary accommodation, especially with young children who need the comfort and stability of their own home,' she says.
'It cannot be right that a year on from the fire, the house has not been rebuilt and the family has so many unanswered questions. My team and I have been supporting the family since they first reached out at the start of the year, doing everything we can to help them reach a just conclusion.'
'We will have to find ourselves again'
Shortly after Fookes entered the fray, Woodgate and Clark 'simply withheld our rent', claims Kaja. Woodgate and Clark declined to comment, but an LV spokesman said the couple had reached the limit of the £50,000 covered by their policy. The insurer claims it has spent more than £120,000 on contents, rent and building reinstatement work.
The more Rawliingson chased for answers, the more hostile LV became.
'Neither I nor LV will be engaging in further correspondence, meetings or negotiations regarding the sums offered in respect of the buildings or alternative accommodation quantum [the cash value of damages],' a claims manager said over email. She later added: 'We do not need to explain or break anything down any further than we already have.'
Rawliingson is preparing to submit the case to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).
'I am not sure how the FOS will view an insurer flatly refusing to engage in reasonable discussion about quantum,' he said to LV over email. 'It's an interesting tactic, but where it sits in terms of Consumer Duty, promoting good customer outcomes and avoiding sludge practices, is hard to see.'
After more than a year at loggerheads with claims managers, loss adjusters and contractors, Kaja and Dean are exhausted. The ordeal has strained their marriage. 'We are battered and bruised here,' says Kaja. 'We will probably have to go through therapy to find ourselves again.'
A spokesman for Allianz, LV's parent company, said: 'We understand the distress a family experiences when their home is damaged by fire, and we do all we can to settle claims and repair damage as quickly as possible.
' Home insurance policies are typically designed to repair damage on a like-for-like basis, so any private work or enhancements to what was previously there can sometimes lead to delays in repair work being completed.
'We have conducted a thorough investigation of this case and are satisfied that the delays were caused by disputes with contractors over additional work that was outside the scope of this claim. In addition, the introduction of a loss assessing firm that engaged their own contractors to quote for the reinstatement works resulted in further delays.
'A payment was issued for the settlement on the buildings reinstatement due to the policyholder not accepting our offer to use LV= General Insurance contractors to reinstate the property.'
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