Guide
Leaving a building empty: the checklist before the void starts
Updated
Most of the damage an empty building suffers is decided in its first fortnight. This is the short list of things that are cheap now and expensive later.
The first week
- Drain down the water system, or keep heating on frost protection if draining is not practical. A burst pipe in an unattended building runs until someone notices, and the repair is usually the largest single bill of any void.
- Isolate services you do not need, keeping only what alarms, cameras or emergency lighting depend on. Get the isolations recorded in writing.
- Clear combustible waste from inside and from the perimeter, including pallets, skips and stored packaging. Arson risk in empty buildings is driven by what is left lying against the walls.
- Secure every accessible opening, including the ones reachable from flat roofs, bin stores and neighbouring parapets.
- Take dated photographs of the whole building, inside and out, before it stands empty. This is the record you will want if you ever have to prove condition.
- Remove or lock down attractive metal: cable drums, lead, copper pipework runs, catalytic converters in any vehicles left on site.
- Fix a mail arrangement. Post visibly piling up at a door is an advertisement that nobody is coming.
Check your own policy wording
Property insurers commonly attach conditions to buildings that become unoccupied, and cover can be restricted once a property has been empty beyond a set period. The conditions typically seen include a required inspection frequency, drain-down or heating requirements, alarm and security requirements, and rules about waste and combustible material. Read your own policy wording and speak to your insurer or broker before the void starts. The specific conditions, periods and consequences vary from policy to policy, and this page cannot tell you what yours says.
We are not insurance advisers, we do not recommend any insurance product, and nothing here is insurance advice. What we can help with is the physical work: screens, barriers, towers, guarding and documented inspection visits, which are often what a policy condition is asking you to put in place.
Inspection visits: what to agree
- Frequency, matched to whatever your policy wording actually requires, not to what sounds reasonable.
- A written record per visit, dated and photographed, covering the whole perimeter as well as the interior. A visit with no report is worth very little if you ever need to evidence it.
- An escalation route, so that forced entry, a leak or fire damage reaches a named person the same day.
- Key holding, so that a callout at three in the morning does not depend on you driving there.
If people are already in the building
Squatting in a residential building is a criminal offence, and gov.uk states it can lead to 6 months in prison, a £5,000 fine or both. Squatting in a non-residential building is not in itself a crime, though causing damage is (gov.uk, squatting and the law). In practice that means an occupied empty commercial building is usually a civil recovery matter, which takes time and costs money, and it is the strongest argument for closing a building properly on day one rather than after it has been found.