Before the Loss Adjuster Calls: A Pre-Agreed Protocol for the First 48 Hours of a Property Incident

Most owner-managed businesses discover their property incident protocol on the morning they need it. A pipe fails above the server room, a rear door is forced overnight, or a substation fault kills power to a chilled store — and suddenly a handful of people are making irreversible decisions at speed, by phone, with no record of who agreed what.

The loss itself is rarely the problem. The problem is what happens next: the clean-up team that disposes of the very evidence the insurer wanted to inspect, the maintenance spend authorised by someone with no delegated authority, the landlord notified four days late, or the RIDDOR report that was never made.

None of these are facilities failures. They are governance failures, and they are avoidable — provided the decisions are agreed in a quiet week rather than a wet one.

Why the first 48 hours are a board matter

An incident compresses the normal decision cycle into hours. In ordinary trading, a director's spending authority, the notification of a landlord and the recording of a decision are separate, comfortable processes. In an emergency they run simultaneously, often out of hours, often with the managing director unreachable on a flight.

Good governance in this context means one thing: nobody has to improvise authority. A short, one-page protocol — signed off at board level, held by the office manager and the caretaker as well as the directors — converts panic into procedure. It also creates the contemporaneous record that insurers, regulators and, occasionally, courts expect to see.

Hour one: safety before salvage

The protocol should open with the non-negotiable sequence, and it should be written in plain language so that a keyholder with no technical background can follow it.

1. Protect people. Evacuate and account for anyone on site. Call 999 for fire, suspected gas, structural movement or intruders still present.
2. Isolate. Electricity, gas and water at the mains where it is safe to do so — and only where the person is competent to do it.
3. Secure the perimeter. Make the building wind- and water-tight, and secure against further entry, without disturbing the scene.
4. Call the named contact. One designated incident lead, with a named deputy. Not a group chat.

The order matters. A tenant who begins moving stock before the electrical supply is confirmed safe has created a new risk, and quite possibly a new liability question.

The decision rights grid

This is the heart of the protocol and the part most SMEs lack entirely. In the absence of a pre-agreed schedule, staff either spend nothing and let damage spread, or spend freely and terrify the finance director. Both are expensive.

A workable model uses three bands, reviewed annually:

• Band 1 — Immediate containment, up to a stated limit (many SMEs set this between £1,000 and £2,500). The incident lead may commit this without calling anyone. Examples: emergency plumber call-out, board-up, hire of dehumidifiers, overnight security.
• Band 2 — Remedial works, up to a higher limit (commonly £10,000 to £25,000). Requires one director's verbal approval, recorded in writing afterwards — a text message or email timestamp is sufficient and should be filed the same day.
• Band 3 — Above the second limit, or any decision that alters the building's fabric, affects a lease obligation, or requires closing to customers. Reserved to the board, or to two named directors acting jointly.

The grid should also state clearly who may not authorise expenditure: typically anyone with a conflict of interest, including a director connected to a contractor being engaged. A one-line conflict declaration in the incident log closes that gap cheaply.

Evidence capture: the discipline that pays for the claim

Insurers do not expect a tenant to preserve a building in aspic. They do expect a coherent account. The protocol should require, before any clearance begins:

• Wide photographs and video of each affected area, taken in sequence from the entrance inwards, with timestamps enabled.
• Photographs of the cause — the failed joint, the damaged lock, the burnt distribution board — before repair.
• Retention of damaged items, or at minimum photographs and a written inventory, until the loss adjuster confirms they may be disposed of.
• A running incident log: time, decision, decision-maker, cost committed, advice received. A single shared document is enough; a notebook photographed at the end of each day is acceptable.
• Copies of all invoices, purchase orders and call-out sheets, kept separately from the general purchase ledger.

Under the Insurance Act 2015, a policyholder owes a duty of fair presentation — an obligation that continues to shape how a claim is handled after the event. Deliberately withholding information, or quietly discarding the damaged stock before inspection, is exactly the conduct that turns an honest claim into a contested one.

Who must be told, and by when

Notification is where tenant-landlord relationships are won and lost. The protocol should name each party and the person responsible for contacting them.

• The insurer or broker — same working day, or within the period stated in the policy, which is often 24 to 48 hours for property damage. Late notification is a common and entirely avoidable ground for friction.
• The landlord or managing agent — immediately where the incident affects the structure, common parts, services or other occupiers. Most leases contain express notification duties, and a delay can be characterised as a breach even where the tenant is blameless for the cause.
• The Health and Safety Executive — where a reportable incident under RIDDOR has occurred, including certain injuries and dangerous occurrences.
• The local authority — for fire safety matters, food premises, licensing conditions or where a closure affects regulated activity.
• The Environment Agency — without delay where water carrying contaminants has entered drains or watercourses.
• Employees, customers and neighbours — through a single named spokesperson, so that the business speaks with one voice.

The protocol should record the contact details for each of these, with out-of-hours numbers, in the same document. An insurer's claims line buried in a policy schedule three folders deep is not a protocol.

Standing the incident down

At the 48-hour mark, the incident lead should convene a short review — fifteen minutes is sufficient — covering four questions: is the site safe and secure; is the evidence complete; have all required parties been notified in writing; and what has been spent against which authority band.

The output is a one-page note to the board. It becomes the spine of the eventual claim, the basis for any service charge challenge from the landlord, and the starting point for whatever changes the incident has revealed.

The practical next step

Draft the protocol as a single side of A4, table it at the next board meeting, and have it signed by every director. Then test it once: ask the office manager to find the stopcock, the insurer's claims number and the landlord's emergency contact without help. The answers usually identify the gaps in twenty minutes. Discovering them then is considerably cheaper than discovering them at two in the morning with water coming through the ceiling.