I was convicted last year of an offence that lead to a suspended sentence. Now, my LV home insurance is due for renewal and, rather than asking about convictions in the past year, it asks about prison sentences in the past year. What I can not find out is if that includes suspended sentences. Obviously I can ring the renewal line and try to renew and just deal with the question as it comes up, BUT that could mean me being turned down for insurance and that can make future cover more difficult to get. LV doesn't seem to have any sort of general inquiries contact so I'm a bit stumped about getting an answer to the question. Has anyone any knowledge of this?        

I can't say for sure, but I would expect a prison sentence to be actually going to prison. A suspended sentence would only become a prison sentence if you ended up in prison. Of course, while that conviction is unspent, LV might try and avoid any claims due to non-disclosure, so you might have to ask them anyway. You could always do it anonymously, via a new email address, so they can't trace it back to you....

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

I have the suspect that it is any sentence which is not Community Order or fine and so on. Hence it includes also a "suspended" sentence. I hope to be wrong though. If you email your insurance please let us know what they say.

Thanks for that AB - that is what I've been trying to do - e-mail using another address, but I've not had a response. I think part of the problem is that, like so many other companies, it's really difficult to get hold of someone who can give an answer. Actually, I'm surprised it's not defined somewhere in their documentation - I guess the fact I can not access that information could mean I could plead ignorance, but I don;t think that's a good way to go.

In general the main insurers won't underwrite home insurance if you have an unspent conviction - most have a default blanket ban rather than examine case by case. Likewise, in many areas the definition of a prison sentence is whether you were given a custodial sentence or not, regardless of whether you actually went to prison or whether it was suspended.

There is a much easier solution - go to the list of insurance brokers that Unlock maintains (you can find it on the Information Hub site). These brokers specialise in people with criminal convictions.

In my personal experience, my home insurance premium was loaded by about 30% due to my conviction, which is better than I had hoped.  Of course, if your conviction is for fraud or any form of dishonesty it will be significantly higher.

Thanks for this. In the end I decided it wasn't worth risking dancing around what terms might or might not mean and used a broker on your list. I went for buildings only and it wasn't cheap, but I could afford it.