Thanks very much for taking the time to respond. I don't believe C&L are being malicious but do believe they are incompetent. Unfortunately the case has not settled, but we are now dealing solely with our Insurers as we have lost all confidence in C&L, can I still deal with their complaints procedure even though the file is not complete? I have difficulty in measuring a quantum of damages, any law I can find would be helpful.
There is no problem in asking why we have given CL so long, and to be honest it is a very good question, why did we give them so long, we have no idea, we just kept plugging away in the hope of having it resolved, only recently the stress has become so much that we couldn't deal with it and Lloyds are now dealing with it on our behalf. We also have never in the 20 plus years had to claim and were unaware that we could go back to Lloyds. Only in the last 2-3 weeks we have involved Lloyds, wish we had done it sooner. It was only due to the fact that CL's builders had done a poor job on patching the floor that we found out how badly the whole claim had been managed. We also have our own business to run which is open 7 days a week for some 12 to 14 hour days from April to October (we are still open through the winter on shorter days) bearing in mind the initial flood was in May, we also have two small children to look after.