Londoners are facing historic levels of subsidence risk after five successive heatwaves dried out the clay soil on which much of the British capital is built.<\/p>\n
Insurance claims tied to subsidence \u2013 a phenomenon associated with bouts of hot, dry weather that shrink the soil and destabilise the foundations on which buildings stand \u2013 hit a record last quarter, according to data provided by the Association of British Insurers (ABI). On average, households claimed \u00a320,000 (US$27,200) for the risk, more than in any previous quarter and a 15 per cent jump from the same period in 2025, the ABI said.<\/p>\n
Laura Hughes, head of general insurance at the ABI, said the upwards trend is likely to continue. \u201cWe expect to see more subsidence cases because of the hot weather,\u201d she said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Londoners have taken to social media to express their dismay. On Reddit, people offered personal accounts telling of \u201chorrendous cracking\u201d in their homes, and \u201cdoors sticking\u201d due to subsidence. One said it was \u201cgenuinely scary\u201d to discover that their kitchen had moved as the foundations of the home shifted.<\/p>\n
Another Reddit user described the response of a structural engineer they contacted for help. \u201cBefore I could finish explaining he laughed and said, \u2018You and 20,000 other people in southeast London\u2019,\u201d the person wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crazy, what\u2019s happening now,\u201d said Otso Lahtinen, chief executive of Geobear, an engineering firm that is regularly called in to repair damage caused by subsidence. \u201cIt\u2019s the new norm, and it seems it will happen more often in the next 20 to 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Londoners are facing historic levels of subsidence risk after five successive heatwaves dried out the clay soil on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1165914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,25596,885,11512,46969,393,4884,2461,18239,257,313668,16,15,3069],"class_list":["post-1165913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-canary-wharf","tag-chelsea","tag-city-of-london","tag-clay","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-heatwave","tag-kensington","tag-london","tag-subsidence","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-westminster"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117148271689823149","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1165914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}