€30m clay subsidence scheme helps only 19 cases in France

A €30million government scheme to help homeowners affected by clay-related subsidence has seen only 19 cases progress to fully funded expert assessment in six months.

The scheme, announced in September 2025, was trialled in 11 departments with high numbers of claims for cracked houses made under household insurance and natural catastrophe insurance policies.

Successful applicants were promised a free expert assessment of the damage, including a detailed estimate of the cost of remedial work.

They would then be eligible for subsidies to help cover repair costs.

Of the roughly 2,000 homeowners who applied, 218 were considered potentially eligible, but only 19 cases progressed to the stage of a fully funded expert assessment during the first six months. 

“We cannot hide it: the result is not good,” Mathieu Lefèvre, the energy transition minister in charge of the project, told the press.

“Our first experience on the ground shows that the process must be simplified, expanded and accelerated.”

He reiterated the need to find solutions to a problem that saw an average of €1billion a year in claims against the natural catastrophe insurance fund between 2016 and 2020. 

This surged to €3.5billion in 2023 after a heatwave accelerated clay shrinkage.

In an effort to improve the scheme, the government said it would increase the number of eligible properties by removing restrictive conditions, such as those relating to the type of cracks affecting buildings. 

It also promised to recruit more trained surveyors, and make greater use of local insurance company networks to identify the most urgent cases.

Most cases involve houses built between the 1970s and 2016, before building regulations were updated to require deeper and wider foundations for new properties. 

However, there have also been a small number of cases in which older stone houses suddenly developed cracks following heatwaves.