Geo-Serv Limited

About Us

Formed in 1991 by its Director Tim Freeman, former Head of the Foundations Section of the Building Research Establishment, the company has 22 years' experience of providing independent advice to home-owners, insurance companies, loss adjusters, local authorities, solicitors, the NHBC and the Insurance Ombudsman.

Our philosophy of dealing with subsidence claims is based very much on the advice and technical information produced by the Building Research Establishment (BRE). This includes the use of precise level monitoring as being the only technique that can be used to quantify the extent and scale of the foundation movements to a subsidence-damaged property. Despite the obvious advantages, measurements of this kind are made in less than 1 in 20 subsidence claims. Geo-Serv offer an unrivalled level monitoring service nationally at competitive prices.

Over the years we have built up a unique database and understanding of the factors that cause subsidence movement in domestic properties. In the vast majority of cases the movements are relatively minor and the cause readily eliminated. By identifying these claims at an early stage, resources can be targeted on the more serious cases. There are obvious benefits of this approach for both the home-owner and the insurer. For the home-owner, the claim can be dealt with fairly, quickly, with minimum inconvenience or risk of blight. While, for the insurer, there are cost benefits of reducing protracted investigations and eliminating unnecessary remedial measures, such as underpinning.

Because we felt there were shortcomings in the mainstream approach to subsidence claims, we have set up a specialist consultancy company - Best Answer Subsidence Engineering (BASE).

For our insurer clients, BASE can provide a range of services to improve the efficiency of their current subsidence claim handling arrangements.

For the home owners, we offer pragmatic advice on all aspects of subsidence claims, including dispute resolution and expert witness services. And, because we are not under contract to any insurer, the advice we offer is truly impartial. When dealing with contentious claims we insist that any technical reports are released simultaneously to both the home owner and the insurer.

Further details of our approach to subsidence claims management have been published in Has your House Got Cracks? which is available from the Thomas Telford bookshop. This book was written to provide practical guidance to home-owners whose properties have been affected by subsidence and was described by the Insurance Ombudsman as "essential reading for anyone who is making a claim for damage or who is thinking about making a claim"

Our customers include the following: