Accidental damage insurance

Accidental damage insurance helps cover the cost of repairing or replacing items accidentally damaged at home. It can include all sorts of mishaps, from kicking a football through a window to spilling red wine on the sofa.

It can also cover unintentional and unforeseen damage to your home’s structure, plus any permanent fixtures and fittings.

Some types of accidental damage fall under buildings insurance; others come under contents insurance. Contents insurance with accidental damage cover protects your belongings at home.

Accidental damage protection is usually an optional add-on to your home contents insurance or buildings insurance for an extra fee. More comprehensive policies sometimes include it as standard, but may be more expensive.

To be covered, the damage must result from a sudden and unexpected event – it can’t be done on purpose, or come about from natural wear and tear or poor maintenance.

The Financial Ombudsman defines accidental damage as something that is:

• Unforeseen

• Unintentional

• Results in a loss of function (your item can’t perform the task it was designed to do).

For example, a blocked drain can be considered damaged even if there’s nothing visibly wrong with it. If it’s blocked, the drain can no longer do what it was designed for.

It depends on your policy. Accidental damage insurance – whether for contents or buildings – is usually sold as an optional extra alongside standard home insurance.

So if you didn't actively purchase it, it's unlikely to be included in your existing cover. But always double-check your policy documents to be sure.

When you compare home insurance quotes with us, you can tell us if you want to include accidental damage cover as an add-on.

Having accidental damage cover in place should mean you won’t be left out of pocket fixing mishaps. It could be particularly worth considering if you have small children.

You typically have to pay to add accidental damage cover to your home insurance. So it’s worth weighing up the cost of this against the likelihood of, say, your child accidentally knocking over the TV and breaking it, meaning you have to buy a new one.

It’s also worth factoring in how much voluntary excess you want to pay towards a claim. A higher excess could lower your premium, but it'll leave you with a higher bill if you ever need to make a claim.

Whether it’s worth making a claim on your home insurance for accidental damage depends on the cost of the damage and how much you’ll have to pay as an excess.

You’ll also need to consider how making a claim could raise your home insurance premium when it’s time to renew, and whether you’d lose any no-claims discount you’ve built up.