Your Guide to Solo cover
What does Solo cover?
Solo offers a core 10-year insurance policy with additional options, depending on your needs. The core cover provides protection during two distinct phases
Phase one - construction and cover before completion
During the actual building process you must notify us, and we will inspect the work at carefully defined stages. If the work at any stage does not meet our Technical Standards, we will tell you. Any such work must be brought up to standard so that every stage will have its own Stage Completion Certificate (SCC).
The benefits of the SCC are:
- Knowing that work covered by an SCC has been professionally inspected by NHBC
- Fewer disputes regarding quality, if it is made a condition of you building contracts with contractors that payments are subject to our SCCs.
- Easier to obtain finance. Your mortgage lender is covered in respect of work for which we have issued an SCC in exactly the same way as you are.
The benefits of insurance cover before completion are:
- NHBC will pay for the full cost if it is more than £1000 Indexed of putting right any physical Damage caused by a Defect in the foundations or substructure of the Home. By substructure we mean the structure below the lowest floor level of the building, including the floor itself and any newly built drainage beneath that floor.
- NHBC will also pay the cost of repairing and/or reinstating any other work affected by putting the defective work right in the foundations or substructure of the Home.
Phase two - completion and cover after completion
When the building work is completed, or deemed to have been completed to our requirements, we will send you the Insurance Certificate covering the ten years following completion.
NHBC will pay the full cost, if it is more than £1000 Indexed, of putting right any actual physical Damage caused by a Defect in any of the following parts of the Home:
- Foundations
- Load-bearing walls
- Non load-bearing partition walls
- Wet-applied wall plaster
- External render and external vertical tile hanging
- Load-bearing parts of the roof
- Tile and slate coverings to pitched roofs
- Ceilings
- Load-bearing parts of the floors
- Staircases and internal floor decking and screeds where these fail to support normal loads
- Newly built retaining walls necessary for the structural stability of the Home
- Double or triple glazing panes to external windows and doors
- Newly built below-ground drainage for which you are responsible
NHBC will also cover:
- The cost of putting right any Defect in a flue or chimney which causes a present or imminent danger to the physical health and safety of anyone normally living in the Home.
- Any reasonable costs you incur by prior agreement with us for removal, storage and appropriate altenative accommodation if it is necessary for you or anyone normally living in the Home to be moved out so that work can be done.
This cover is fully transferable to subsequent owners if you sell the home.
Please refer to our policy document for a complete description of the cover.
Additional cover - NHBC offers additonal options to combine with your core cover
Will Solo cover all risks? - There are certain risks that Solo does not cover
