Some insurers do not engage expert forensic engineers but rely on assessors or inexperienced ‘fire investigators’ who do not have any specific product concern knowledge and/or limited fire investigation experience. This makes it impossible for their ‘investigator’ to accurately determine the cause of the fire. In these cases, the insurers forfeit the opportunity to claim against the manufacturer and subsequently the customer is left out of pocket together with a lost or reduced No Claims Bonus for no fault of their own. 

Determining arson requires specialist training and considerable experience. The use of accelerants was historically used, but now there are simpler methods that can be very difficult to detect for the inexperienced investigator. During my time at Ford, I saw many independent reports citing ‘arson’ or ‘external cause cannot be ruled out’ or a speculative cause when there was simply no evidence to support their conclusion. In some cases, the actual cause, a defect, was clear and apparent within the images contained in their report. Other reports are clearly authored by inexperienced investigators who have struggled to make an accurate determination so have speculated to deflect liability.