New research from Saga Home Insurance showing that 56% of UK homeowners have had a dispute with a neighbour over trees is drawing attention to a wider issue for insurers: legal expenses cover, the product most such disputes would fall under, is one the FCA has flagged as delivering weaker value than most other add-ons in the market. The FCA's general insurance value measures data for the 2024 calendar year, published October 2025, showed before-the-event home legal expenses insurance among the weaker-performing add-ons, with only 51% of claims accepted and one in ten resulting in a complaint, according to Insurance DataLab analysis.
The acceptance rate and the product design are directly connected. Legal expenses claims are assessed on prospects of success rather than paid automatically - a structure insurers say explains the lower acceptance rate but which also leaves customers who assumed broader protection more likely to complain when a claim is declined. A product sold on the strength of an emotive and relatively narrow use case - tree disputes, boundary disagreements, pruning rights - with a claims assessment threshold that many customers do not know exists is a specific fair value risk under the Consumer Duty, not a general one. The FCA has already intervened on underperforming add-ons including GAP insurance, and commentators covering the 2024 data have suggested personal accident and legal expenses add-ons could be next under the fair value rules.
Saga's survey found overhanging branches were the most common flashpoint, cited by 30% of respondents, ahead of leaves blowing into gardens at 28% and root damage at 15%. Standard buildings and contents cover typically responds only where a neighbour's tree causes direct physical damage - a fallen branch damaging a fence, for example - not to the underlying dispute itself. For boundary disagreements, pruning rights and access to mediation, the relevant product is legal expenses insurance, an add-on most UK insurers now offer or include as standard for a few pounds a month.
Anna Thunstrom, Saga's head of home insurance, said the financial exposure customers face without adequate cover can be significant - fines of up to £20,000 for damaging a protected tree, on top of potential civil compensation, legal fees and replacement costs - and noted that legal expenses cover, where held, can fund advice or representation if a dispute cannot be resolved directly with a neighbour.
The gap in consumer understanding Saga's survey uncovered maps directly onto the fair value concern the FCA's data identifies. A third of respondents did not know they could legally cut back overhanging branches at the boundary line, and 60% wrongly believed fallen fruit becomes their property. Customers who do not understand their basic legal rights in a tree dispute are unlikely to understand the claims assessment threshold of their legal expenses policy either - meaning the expectation gap that generates complaints begins at the product sale rather than at the claims stage.
It is worth noting that the 51% acceptance rate covers legal expenses claims broadly rather than neighbour tree disputes specifically, since the FCA does not require firms to report full claims-cost data for legal expenses products at that level of detail. The structural point - assessed rather than automatic payment, emotive use cases, limited consumer understanding of what a policy will and will not resolve - applies regardless.
For brokers, the combination of a widely shared dispute type and a product with below-average claims acceptance is a fair value conversation that Consumer Duty makes difficult to defer. Explaining upfront that legal expenses claims are assessed rather than automatic, and setting realistic expectations about what a policy will and will not resolve, is likely to matter more for complaint volumes and Consumer Duty compliance than for the sale itself. The FCA's value measures framework was introduced specifically to surface this kind of gap - and legal expenses cover, as the Saga data illustrates, is providing exactly the kind of consumer recognition that makes regulatory attention more likely rather than less.
