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Associate Article

Population boom

With last years floods costing the British Insurance industry somewhere in the region of £3bn in insurance claims (that’s roughly four years worth of claims in two months) the ABI (Association of British Insurers) have unsurprisingly become decidedly nervous in the face of the threat of further flooding.

Their nervousness has led to the government being forced to strike a deal with the insurance companies in order to ensure that nearly 517,000 homes that the insurance industry deem to be in areas of high flood risk are still able to get home insurance. In return for the insurance industry agreeing to cover these homes the government has committed to significantly improving flood defences throughout the country over the next five years.

As part of the deal the government has also committed to making sure that planning applications for large scale housing developments on flood plains are rejected. Insurance companies had previously shown concern that not only were there potentially millions of houses at risk of flooding but that these numbers would go up in the near future.

Unfortunately for the government things are not going to get easier. Long-term climate change predictions are suggesting that the ‘once in a century’ flooding of last year will become a much more regular occurrence as global warming begins to be felt on a more regular, and noticeable, basis.

For the moment the government, then, has its back against the wall. No matter how good flood defences are, nothing will hold back the pure weight of water that fell from the skies last summer. If global warming, or climate change as it seems to be known more frequently, occurs as the current predictions state, regular flooding is a real risk and the insurance companies are only going to pay out massive figures for so long before there will be no way of convincing them to insure the houses that they deem to be ‘high risk’.

Still, even bearing this in mind, the government had no choice but to agree to the compromise to ensure that over half-a-million high risk houses, and a great number of others at slightly lower risk, retained insurability. For the moment if you live in a house in a ‘high risk’ area you will be able to get insurance, but with the credit crunch and other economic factors, it may well be that any policies that you do find will be prohibitively expensive. It’s more important than ever, then, to make sure you take a good look at what’s available and get the best deal possible.

For house insurance quotes, use a reputable firm like RIAS.





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