Home insurance with Flood cover

johngc

My first post :beer:

I am living in a town that was flooded quite badly a few years ago. Apparently due to human error, a flood gate was not open or shut quickly enough at a nearby resoviour after a period of heavy rain and there was a flash flood which made a right mess!

The road my house is on was affected but the council have now done work to prevent it happening again (apparently). I was aware of this when I bought the house and managed to eventually get insurance with a hefty excess should it flood again.

Renewal time has arrived and my price has gone up more than I was expecting so I am starting to look else where. The only problem is that all of the 'comparison' web sites don't seem to cover flooding or link to any services that do.

Does any one know of any competative companies that cover flood areas?

mattymoo

Flooding is a bit of an issue because of the generally poor quality of the data involved.
Many insurers rely on the maps from the Environment Agency but these are very pessimistic and do not take flood defences in to account.
NU did a terrain elevation survey and river flow survey a few years ago. There data is very accurate but they do ignore flood defences on the basis they might fail.
Other insurers rely on basic terrain elevation maps / EA maps and historical experience.

Your best bet might be to see an insurance broker in the local area. They will be able to discuss your case with the underwriter and explain about the work carried out. The underwriter will be guided by this information.
Some insurers also employ their own surveyors with local knowledge. They tend to only get involved with high net worth cases only though.

Finally, if you want to do a little research, go to your local authorities website and search for "Strategic Flood Risk Assessment". Some authorities charge for this but not all. Some of these documents are a gold mine of information re flooding in your own area.