Check your insurance before the school holidays!

In the light of research from insurance company, Sheila’s Wheels, parents would be well advised to check their home insurance, with the start of the school holidays upon us.

Their figures show that one in four children under the age of 16 has caused damage to, or broken, a piece of expensive electrical equipment at an average rate of £183 per child per year. Nationwide the total bill for repairs or replacement comes to a staggering £553 million a year.

The top five gadgets to be affected are DVD players (43%), games consoles such as the Wii, PS3 and X Box 360 (39%), TVs (34%), stereos (33%) and laptops (31%).

Accidental damage cover on the home contents policy can be worth its weight in gold but is often seen as a luxury which people cannot afford to pay for. This is perhaps the reason why 25% of families have had accidental damage caused by their offspring but only 20% have claimed on their insurance policy. There are also a surprising 17% of parents who have no home contents insurance whatsoever.

According to a spokesperson from Sheila’s Wheels, boredom is a prime contributory factor for damage during the school holidays: kids cooped up indoors during the great British summer have the capacity to inflict untold damage on delicate pieces of equipment. Then of course there is carelessness, with spilt drinks on computers being a perennial problem.

Scottish children come out worst in the statistics, causing a third more damage (£243 per year) than the UK as a whole, whilst children in the Midlands are much less likely to be caught behaving badly and cause a mere £105 on average each year.

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