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“Every decant we avoid is a home that stays in use” – Talking subsidence with Geobear’s Omar Alata
Geobear’s Omar Alata
A
ſt er the hottest summer on record drove subsidence insurance payouts to an all-time high of £307 million, and with
drought warnings already in place for 2026, structural movement is climbing the agenda for social landlords. Omar Alata, Head of Social Housing at ground engineering specialist Geobear, discusses procurement habits, and how Harrow Council saved nearly £500,000 on a single block.
OMAR, SUBSIDENCE HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS A LOT OVER THE PAST YEAR. WHAT’S ACTUALLY GOING ON? T e short version is weather. T e driest spring in a century was followed by the hottest summer on record, and much of England – London, the South East, the Midlands – sits on shrinkable clay. When clay dries it contracts, foundations move, and you
get the classic symptoms: stepped cracking, sticking doors, gaps at skirtings. Insurers paid out a record £300 million for residential subsidence in 2025, and the damage oſt en shows up months aſt er the heat, so cases are still landing now. With the Environment Agency warning that drought could carry into this summer, I’d expect another busy year.
IS SOCIAL HOUSING STOCK MORE EXPOSED THAN PRIVATE HOUSING? In many areas, yes. A lot of council stock went up quickly in the post-war and 1970s booms, on foundations shallower than today’s standards. Estates were also landscaped generously, with trees planted close to homes. Fiſt y years on, those trees are mature and their roots are drawing moisture from the clay right under the foundations – what the industry calls clay tree subsidence, and it
Housing Management & Maintenance Summer 2026
accounts for a large share of claims in surge years. Redditch is a good example – Bromsgrove and Redditch Council manages over 6,000 homes, much of it 1970s stock with exactly that combination of shallow footings, clay and maturing trees.
THE TRADITIONAL ANSWER IS UNDERPINNING. WHAT’S WRONG WITH IT? Nothing, structurally – it works. T e problem is everything around it. You’re excavating under a building, so tenants have to move out, oſt en for 20 weeks or more. Someone has to fi nd and fund temporary accommodation at around £4,000 a month per family room. You’ve got heavy plant on the estate for months, mud everywhere – and underpinning schemes usually mean cutting back vegetation and removing the very trees that make an estate worth living on. And the whole time,
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