My occasional three-act suspense dramas on the antics of energy firms may have left you cold, but I’ve now adapted the thriller tales of insurance customers for the stage. These really will keep you awake at night.

Act I

Somerset, 2019 An earthquake is followed by a storm. Rain starts to flood SB’s conservatory. This is not just any old conservatory. It links the annexe, where her severely disabled adult son lives, with the bungalow where SB also cares for her disabled daughter and it is the hub of the home.

For a year, Tesco, SB’s home insurer, dispatches ineffectual contractors to fiddle with the damage. Then, when an assessor decides the roof needs to be replaced at a cost of £24,000, it decides that the building itself is to blame, and refuses to cover the cost. The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) sides with SB and orders Tesco to finish the job, pay compensation and make good damage caused by its own contractors.

By this stage, what with pandemic lockdowns, three years have passed. It takes Tesco another 17 months to restart the repairs to worsening damage, and the family is rehoused in three caravans. As work drags on, they are moved to a Travelodge and then to two cabins on a holiday camp. All this while, SB is coping with a son in a wheelchair who requires round-the-clock care, and a daughter with Down’s syndrome who can’t understand where her home has gone. That home, meanwhile, is still damp, damaged and filthy from years of stop-start building work. “I loved my home but now I end up crying when I go there,” she says.

Tesco blames the nearly-five-year ordeal on the number of leaks, and the shortage of expert contractors. It tells me that SB could have moved back home in September, but chose not to and insists the repairs are now complete apart from a single new leak. SB says she was never told she could move back in, the repairs are not complete and the new leak is, in fact, the unrepaired original. Tesco, when challenged, hastily amends its response and apologies for delays caused by unspecified “external issues” beyond its, or SB’s, control. It says it is covering additional uninsured work as goodwill and will (nearly two years late) pay £500 compensation ordered by the ombudsman. SB and her family moved back in mid-November after five nomadic months and face living with further weeks of building work.

Act II

London, January 2024 ST returns from holiday with her six young children to find a water pipe has burst in the loft and flooded their home from top to bottom. Her insurer, esure, says that it can’t rehouse them over a weekend and suggests she find a hotel. Hotels that can safely accommodate two adults and six home-schooled children under 12 are in short supply, so the family crams in with ST’s parents. Esure declares that lodging with relatives invalidates entitlement to a disturbance allowance. That’s the first of 10 months of daily phone calls to get things moving, according to ST.

Asbestos is found in the collapsed ceilings and it’s late April by the time they are removed. By July, the house is still wet and uninhabitable, and the family has been transferred to a small rental property which does not have internet access. ST is told 15% will be deducted from her payout for wear and tear, despite her policy confirming new for old, and says the schedules of work that esure sent to tender do not include drying the property before refitting it.

“The system is designed to exhaust the consumer,” she says. “There are hurdles at every protracted stage.” Esure admits poor communication, but insists it has acted in line with the policy. It says the disturbance allowance has since been paid, and deductions for wear and tear were mentioned in error. It has now agreed a payout to cover repairs, since ST has lost faith in esure’s choice of contractors.

Act III

Wales, November 2023 A fire breaks out in the cottage where PG lives with her 80-year-old husband, who has advanced Parkinson’s. The couple escape uninjured, but their living room and kitchen are damaged and the rest of the house is stacked with stuff salvaged from the blaze. Six months later, their insurer, Royal & Sun Alliance (RSA), has still not got round to starting repairs. PG’s formal complaint is closed by RSA, which admits “unnecessary delays” then sinks back into inertia. PG hires her own assessor to advise on the work required to make the rooms habitable, but gets no further forward. I interfere, prompting RSA to offer a cash settlement along with £500 in goodwill. However, it’s just before the anniversary of the fire, and after three months of pressure from me, that it finally stumps up the full amount. In the meantime, PG’s husband is diagnosed with dementia.

“I am struggling not to feel bitter that the last 12 months have been such that I have lost the chance of spending time with my husband while he was lucid,” she says. “Now he is confused most of the day and he won’t even be able to read his books that have had to be replaced.” RSA apologises via the Observer for its “poor handling” of the claim and promises to investigate its own failings.

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