FOR over 30 years our reader, Mr W has been a customer of Royal Insurance for his home and contents policies. The owner of a large house in Dublin, he pays over £360 a year to the company to insure his property and so was very pleased to be alerted last year by Royal to a possible age-related discount.

This particular Homeshield Plus discount is a very common one in the industry and offers 10 per cent off the premiums if you or your spouse are aged over 50.

Since Mr W is over 80 he applied for the offer. Unfortunately, a pre-condition of the discount is that the property has between one and five bedrooms. Mr W's house has six bedrooms and his application was rejected.

Mr W wrote to Royal expressing his annoyance at being excluded from the offer. He pointed out that he was a customer of over 30 years standing.

We contacted Royal Insurance for an explanation and were told by Mr David Richards, the company's deputy manager, that "it is the number of bedrooms that determines the cost of this policy. There is an assumption of standard value that can be taken with houses with up to five bedrooms. In other words, we can pretty accurately assume that people who own typical three bedroom semi-detached houses will have a certain value of furnishings and contents". The contents of houses with more than five bedrooms cannot be assessed in this way, says Mr, Richards.

Describing Mr W as a "valued" customer of the company, Mr Richards says that the company would review his existing policy carefully to see if he is liable to any other discounts.

"We'll certainly see what we can do for him," says Mr Richards.