What is a watercourse?

Legacy_user

With all this flooding around, and after reading some recent threads here about the insurance consequences of flooding, I'm wondering just what counts as a watercourse for insurance purposes.

Obviously a named river or stream is a watercourse, and I can see from looking up areas on the Environment Agency website that some unnamed springs and brooks are marked. So on the face of it, for insurance purposes a water course is anything marked as blue on the EA maps.

Equally obviously, a culvert or ditch at the side of a road taking rainwater is not a watercourse. But is that because it is defined as below a certain size, or because it is seasonal, perhaps only running for a few months of the year?

I am asking because we have a tiny stream running through our garden. It rises in a spring at the top of the garden, flows in a chanel about 6" deep down the sloping garden, and then joins a culvert under the road and runs on down our hill into a small river half a mile away. It usually dries up for a few months each summer.
I have never declared it as "living within 400 metres of a watercourse", because common sense says it isn't one.

This winter however lots of new pseudo-watercourses and springs have appeared in the nearby fields.Many are presumably underground watercourses that no-one knew about, which have broken surface this year because of the volume of rainfall.

Anyone any thoughts on how these would be defined in the event of an insurance claim, perhaps even as a non-disclosure in the course of a totally non-flood related incident?

Quentin

Yours is a watercourse.

InsideInsurance

Unless it is defined specifically in the policybook then it follows the standard english dictionary definition.

A quick check on an online dictionary says it is any channel with running water, natural or artificial. Alternatively a Stream, River or Canal

I would say that a stream certainly would be a watercourse. A culvert I wouldnt say it is really any more than a sewer is as its a covered pipe not an open channel.

A ditch at the side of the road I think is different as typically they dont have running water in them, just stagnant water were it has run into it but then sits there.

Spikey1

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

This winter however lots of new pseudo-watercourses and springs have appeared in the nearby fields.Many are presumably underground watercourses that no-one knew about, which have broken surface this year because of the volume of rainfall.

Anyone any thoughts on how these would be defined in the event of an insurance claim, perhaps even as a non-disclosure in the course of a totally non-flood related incident?

Hi Clifford, CIDRA 2013 confirms that an Insurer cannot penalise a customer for non-disclosure of information which they could not reasonably be expected to know. I'd suggest that the examples quoted above would probably fall into that category. Their existence, even after they have surfaced (then disappeared again !) isn't something that a customer could be 'expected' to know about (unless they'd been flooded by it of course). Some people will know about these emerging water courses whereas other won't know anything about them. So I think they are different to 'mapped' watercourses which should be common knowledge. Your question could probably give rise to a lengthy debate but, putting it simply, I can't see that an Insurer could prove the case for non-disclosure.

Buzby

A dried up watercourse is still one that requires disclosure. Adding that it dried up for half the year would be a sensible disclosure. Whether mapped or otherwise, if a loss adjuster notes it's presence - then it will be disclosed. The fact it is culverted into the roadway is the final proof - if it wasn't a watercourse, why was it there?

Disclosure prevents problems down the line.

Spikey1

By the way....as a point of interest.....does anyone out there really think that a Loss Adjuster will check out a 400 metre radius around the damaged property to determine the presence of watercourses ?


I'd venture to suggest that there is virtually no chance of this happening. Apart from the fact that they are not contracted to do this the poor blighters wouldn't have the time anyway. These guys are absolutely crushed with workload all year round nowadays.


Don't ever be a Loss Adjuster.....been there, done that, not nice !

hollie.weimeraner

Spikey1 wrote: »

By the way....as a point of interest.....does anyone out there really think that a Loss Adjuster will check out a 400 metre radius around the damaged property to determine the presence of watercourses ?

If the loss is attributable to flooding there is every chance they will check. They won't need to do a local search as watercourse will generally show on OS maps and also on Insurance Company mapping systems.

ROY47

Spikey1 wrote: »

By the way....as a point of interest.....does anyone out there really think that a Loss Adjuster will check out a 400 metre radius around the damaged property to determine the presence of watercourses ?


I'd venture to suggest that there is virtually no chance of this happening. Apart from the fact that they are not contracted to do this the poor blighters wouldn't have the time anyway. These guys are absolutely crushed with workload all year round nowadays.

They only need to look at an ordnance survey map
I didn't know until I did this and found a watercourse near me

Just type in "street maps" and have a look near where you live

I used this one

https://maps.google.co.uk/

System

ROY47 wrote: »

They only need to look at an ordnance survey map

https://maps.google.co.uk/

That's my point. Nothing within a mile of our house shows on the map. If every seasonal open running water however small were shown the map would be thick with criss-crossed blue lines.
But it can't flood - we are a mile from the nearest river, 100m high, on a slope near the top of a hill.

InsideInsurance

You say you have a stream on your property and so clearly you know you are in within 400m of a watercourse as every definition possible includes a stream.

Obviously it is up to you if you want to take a punt and not declare it hoping that as you believe it can never flood your property that there will never be any cause for a loss adjuster or insurer to make any enquiries.

System

InsideInsurance wrote: »

You say you have a stream on your property and so clearly you know you are in within 400m of a watercourse as every definition possible includes a stream.

.

OK, I'll rephrase the question - what is a stream?

If any water running in a channel, natural or man-made, of whatever size, flowing for part of the year, is a stream, then there can't be a property in the UK that isn't within 400m of a "watercourse".

Is the road down down our hill a watercourse ? - water is gushing down the ditches, sometimes overflowing the culvert entrances.
Is the drain from our barn roof a watercourse ?- it flows down a 4" concrete channel about 30 yards before joining a culvert in the road.

Is there an insurance definition of a watercourse ? Is it anything in blue on the Environment Agency flood risk map?
How small would a "stream" have to be before it would be a trickle and presumably not reportable?