Home insurance premium + imaginary flood risk - Grrrrrrr!

Hezzawithkids

Or How Insurance Companies Plan to Extort Money from Innocent People.

Our home insurance premiums have rocketed from approx £180 2 years ago to - according to the latest quote we have - £650. :eek: The reason? Our insurers have decided that our house - that we have lived in for the last 15 years without a single claim on our policy - is suddenly in a "Flood Risk Area".

Yes we live 200 meters from a canal. This is the Grand Union Canal which. although fed by two rivers in our town, isn't tidal and is and has always been controlled by sluice gates as a matter of course and whenever there is heavy rain a team of British Waterways people are out and about making sure the water levels don't rise above critical. As far as I can discover the Grand Union Canal has never flooded in its entire history and even the Environment Agency online map shows our road well away from any risk. Yet the insurance company has, in its infinite wisdom, decided that it knows better and upped the premium accordingly.

We are now in touch with a specialist broker who has said he can get the premium down to the £350-mark but with a £5k excess !!!!!!.

Trying desperately hard not to go all Daily Mail on this but !!!!!!?????

banger9365

your lucky ,they seem to put it on my car insurance as well which is not good ,and the house and content keeps rising up just has much
my brooker say its because i live close to water ,river,beck ect with in a certain distance

pmduk

If you believe you know better than the insurance co, then ask for a quote without flood cover. Possibly the insurance co no longer wants to cover people in your area so have hiked the premiums accordingly.

You might find it useful to seek advice on the insurance board.

dacouch

It's not unknown for canels to leak or the banks to collapse.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4659902/shocking-images-of-floods-bursting-canal-bank.html

Try contacting Aviva for a quote as they ignore the Environmental Agencies flood maps and rely on their own data which they gained through flying a plane over the UK with radar equipment so they could map out the terrain and each individual house's flood risk.

Nilrem

It sounds like they've gone by the postcode for the OP.

IIRC when we did our insurance a few years back we specifically mentioned that whilst we were in a flood area, and that whilst our garden did flood, the house was much further away from the source of the flooding than the neighbours*, and on higher ground.
In our case the insurance company contacted the underwriters whilst we were on the phone to get an answer, and it was fine (I suspect the underwriter actually had access to more detailed records).

As some of the others have said, it could be they are going on the Environment agency maps, and not the actual history, although it could also be they are paying closer attention to things like being near canals because they can and do flood.


*I've never been able to find out why, but our house seems to be built on a plot intended for 3-4 going by the rest of the estate.