nonymouse wrote:

Thanks for your advice and honesty. Truth is, we honestly don't know if
the current repairs are necessary due to a previous storm...but it's
only recently that we've noticed it. So there is an element of truth in
what I'm saying. I am not deliberately trying to defraud the insurance
company.

An insurance company would only pay up for this if you could produce a
structural engineer's report stating that the damage was caused by a
storm, or lightning strike, etc. Otherwise natural deterioration of
the pointing over a period of time is what they will term a "gradually
operating cause" - this is something which all insurance policies
specifically exclude.

--
Andy