What Is Household Insurance?

Household insurance falls into two distinct types of policy: contents and buildings. You can choose to have just one type or both.

Buildings Insurance

Buildings insurance protects the structure and fabric of a home you own, including the walls, windows, doors, floors, ceilings, roof, pipes, gutters, decorations, outbuildings, and fixtures and fittings such as baths, basins, radiators, boiler, fitted kitchen cupboards, and the garage. In short, it protects things you couldn't take with you if you moved home.

Contents Insurance

Contents insurance protects things that you normally keep in your home, whether you own or rent the property. These are items that aren't an integral part of the building, such as furniture and furnishings,carpets and curtains, electrical appliances, kitchen and bathroom equipment, sports equipment, clothes, books, CDs, and jewellery. In short, it protects movable possessions. In certain cases, a policy may cover these possessions elsewhere, for instance while you are away from home, or the place where a student member of the family lives in term-time.

Cover can only extend to people who have what the insurers call an identifiable interest in your property, so members of the same family and common-law spouses can be covered by the same policy, but a group of friends sharing a flat, for instance, could not.