Holiday home insurance

About your holiday homes

You, your business or its subsidiary companies:

• only let the property where there is a holiday let agreement (electronically or signed paper agreement) and any booking must not be less than 3 consecutive nights or more than 30 consecutive nights unless used by you, your family or your friends (friends being persons who you know and have trust in)
• do not provide or store any pedal cycles, motorised or non-motorised vehicles at the holiday home
• keep written records of any repair or maintenance to the property and of all cleaning and inspection checks between each let or no later than 5 days after the property has last been used.

Your guest(s) in your holiday home properties:

• only guests who are stated on the signed holiday letting agreement will stay overnight at the property unless the property is being used by you, your family or friends (friends being persons who you know and have trust in)
• are occupying the property solely for the purpose of a holiday.

Your property(ies):

• is adequately furnished to be used as a holiday home
• will not be unoccupied for more than 90 consecutive days at any time during the policy year
• are not and will not be:
  • your main residence
  • let out other than for the whole premises
  • let out to Stag or Hen parties
  • let to charities or similar organisations

About your short-term lets

You, your business or its subsidiary companies:

• only let the property where there is an agreement (electronically or signed paper agreement) for each booking
• keep written records of any repair or maintenance to the property and of all cleaning and inspection checks between each let or no later than 5 days after the property has last been used
• do not have signed letting agreements for 6 months or more.

Your property(ies):

• will not be unoccupied for more than 90 consecutive days at any time during the policy year
• are not and will not be:
  • your main residence
  • let out other than for the whole premises
  • let out to Stag or Hen parties
  • let to charities or similar organisations

No, we only cover holiday homes within the United Kingdom.

We cover holiday homes built of standard construction, so built of brick, stone or concrete and roofed with slate, tiles or concrete. We currently do not cover static or mobile caravans.

Whether to family, friends or paying guests, as the property owner you have a number of legal responsibilities and duties to ensure that the property is safe - so our holiday home policy comes with £2m Public Liability insurance as standard. This limit can be increased subject to an additional premium.

Public liability covers the sums you are legally liable to pay for compensation and claimants costs and expenses following accidental bodily injury to a third party, or accidental damage to third party property arising from your activity as a holiday home business.

Cover is based on you being negligent, and does not cover intentional actions.

No, there are no minimum security conditions, such as having 5 lever mortice locks rather than a 3 lever mortice lock on the policy.

If you have selected the optional cover of Accidental Damage, we do cover damage by pets — but there is a general policy exclusion of damage caused by 'scratching'. Accidental damage caused by the pet as a one-off incident, such as chewing, tearing, or if the pet were unwell and vomited, would be covered. It doesn't cover incidents where the pet has repeatedly caused damage, as this is not a one-off accident.

If you create an inventory of the items in your holiday home, you can allocate a cost to replace them as new to get a total of how much you should insure for. This may take a little time to begin with but will be easy to update and manage going forward. Remember to keep the sum insured up to date when you buy new items or upgrade items in your holiday home. Keeping receipts and photos is also a good discipline and helps support any claims that you submit.

You could use a contents calculator as a helpful tool. Check out the contents calculator used for our Home customers. Please be aware that this is for people's main residences and not holiday homes, so do not include items that are not covered such as valuables. Please be aware the bullet points about limits and cover relate to the Direct Line Home policy and not the holiday home insurance policy.

If you select our Buildings cover, you'll automatically get Equipment Breakdown cover. This pays to repair or replace your boiler, irrespective of its age, if it breaks down, but excludes wear and tear. Read more about our boiler insurance cover.

To make a claim, you need to arrange for a boiler engineer to visit your property and assess the boiler. They need to submit their report to us, so we can assess whether the claim is covered. If it is, we'll reimburse you for the repair/replacement costs, including parts, labour and call out charges, less the £200 excess.

This cover is not a maintenance contract - it doesn't cover servicing or Gas Safety Certificates (CP12).

The rebuild cost is the total cost of the work needed to completely rebuild your property to the condition it was in before it was destroyed beyond repair. This includes costs for materials, labour, professional fees, debris removal and VAT (if applicable). This is not the property's market value.

If you're unsure, you can get the rebuild cost from a qualified surveyor or use the ABI Public Rebuild Calculator.

It's your responsibility to make sure the insured rebuilding cost is enough to cover the cost of rebuilding the property.

The property must be used solely as a holiday home and not used for business use and we don't cover holiday homes where any form of non-motorised or motorised cycle or vehicle is provided (e.g. pedal cycles, scooters, Segway's, quad bikes, motorcycles or cars).