Q&A: The Government answers your flood insurance questions

If these houses are put up by developers, why blame others? Surely they know they are building in an area with risk, and the buyers should be similarly informed. We can’t blame others if we make a poor choice, can we?

As I intimated, a change in risk (e.g. not maintaining defences or, as you say, poor planning that significantly increases a risk) is a separate issue. A question I am asking is that if people choose to live in a flood risk area what steps can they themselves take to help prevent, or mitigate, flood damage.

Insurance is about risk – the more of a risk you are, the more you pay, whether it is young or dangerous drivers, or people who have chosen to live in areas that were known to be at risk of flooding. Tax we pay is used to mitigate flood risk and money is not unlimited, so must be used as effectively as possible. Where we need action is in ensuring building is properly planned where a flood risk exists, and that building does not contribute to flood risk elsewhere. We must bear in mind this has been a very exceptional period of wet weather over which we had no control – cutting carbon emissions in the UK would have had no effect either. I think we should know whether dredging the river in the Somerset levels would have been sufficient to offset the effects of this record-breaking rainfall, sand exceptional sea conditions.

I had just assumed that London and the Soutth are regarded as far more important than the northern regions. 🙁

A huge effort went into dealing with the floods in 2007 – whether north or south. Leeds and Sheffield suffered, as did Oxford, the Thames Valley, Gloucestershire. So I don’t think introducing a geographical divide is either helpful or justified. Most of the damage is paid for by insurance – £3bn in 2007. The help to victims seemed to be general. Flood defence investment will always be based on maximum return I guess – how else can you prioritise resources? No different with coastal erosion – some properties will not justify the cost of defences. We need to look at both defences, and the underlying factors – including farming practices that lead to soil erosion that help clog drainage sytems and waterways, and developments that take place either in inappropriate areas or are not forced to make adequate provision against normal floods. I also maintain that householders could do more to help protect their properties.

John is absolutely right in what he said about the 2007 flooding. Considering the number of properties affected in the north, there was not much help provided.

By coincidence I have this evening been listening to a group of people debating the lack of support for those affected by flooding in Yorkshire (in 2007) and in Cumbria, compared with current support for the south. They offered the same explanations that John and I have given. I think you are right about the reasons for this prioritisation, Malcolm, but like many others I believe the geographical divide is a bit unfair.

I’d prefer to see hard evidence of a north-south divide before accepting anecdotal evidence. From what I recall of 2007, with Yorkshire and Humberside being particularly badly effected, a good deal of help was given in trying to deal with excerptional rainfall. I would not take the blank cheque book at face value – that is not what is being offered. Small businesses will receive some limited financial aid and council tax will not be.charged on people unable to occupy property for example.
I would be interested to see a survey of who, in areas at risk of flooding, have modified their homes to help deal with the risk.

Malcolm, I wasn’t intending to suggest that there was any sort of north-south divide in the allocation of resources to deal with the flooding problems between 2007 and 2013-14. I was merely trying to indicate the contrasting scale of the problem in relation to the political reaction then and now – it just happened that the comparator was the Yorkshire & Humberside region which suffered particularly badly in 2007, just as it happens that now we are in the run-up to a general election whereas then we were not.

As to the blank cheque analogy, I am very aware that there is no blank cheque for the businesses and householders who have suffered during this catastrophe; but the PM made it clear that “money was no object” in coping with the present problem whether it be flood defences, military assistance, relaying railway tracks, dredging rivers, rebuilding sea walls, and so on. I cannot recall any politician ever before saying that “money was no object” about any previous disaster or predicted adverse weather event. That was the blank cheque, and it will be interesting to see whether the words and figures will agree. I think the devil will be spotted somewhere in the detail.

While it would have been better if the flooding had been averted by proper land drainage measures, an earlier implementation of sustainable drainage schemes, and tighter planning controls on new developments on flood plains, the remedy [or sticking plaster] now emerging is thanks to persistent media attention that has stirred up the politicians into a much more acceptable response than the “leave it alone and it will go away” approach in previous years. On the question of new developments on flood plains and the creation of excessive water run-off with inadequate catchment capacity, my curious mind questions whether the local councils who are under pressure to promote the building of new houses [government planning guidance is biased in favour of it], and who also want to increase their rateable property base, are not only sufficiently disinterested intrinsically but also entirely unaffected by influence from the housebuilders to stand in the way of developments that might lead to – or at the least do nothing to mitigate – flooding. To put it crudely, I think the housebuilders have got the local planning authorities over a barrel [or a water butt, even].

I should be surprised if it made any commercial sense for insurance companies to eliminate the risks from which they make their money. The capital funding for such investment would have to be over a long term but as soon as householders perceived there was little risk they would stop taking out insurance or switch to companies that didn’t invest in flood prevention. At the moment, so long as the government continues with flood prevention measures the insurance companies will carry on offering insurance cover in areas at risk. The argument is that the government is barely meeting its obligations. The government already takes an insurance premium tax from every policy and really needs to improve the country’s resilience to all calamitous weather events.

Insurers presume that things of high personal value will be kept in a safe place. Because they are ‘priceless’, ‘invaluable’ and ‘irreplaceable’ they will not pay out on them unless they are specifically included within special terms of the policy [and then subject to special conditions and an uplift in the premium]. Losses like yours are extremely upsetting but not something that money can really compensate for; a token is probably the best to hope for I am afraid.