A news article is being run on the BBC website and the news bulletins this morning about the worries over flood insurance for vulnerable areas.

Tens of thousands of people who were flooded in 2007 may find it impossible to get cover for their homes and businesses unless the government and insurers reach a new agreement.

Campaigners say the government needs to act quickly as guarantees on vulnerable homes are due to end in June 2013.

The Association of British Insurers argues the agreement was a temporary measure and has distorted the market.

It wants the government to offer more help.

To put it simply, the insurance industry committed to keep flood insurance affordable for at risk communities so long as the Scottish and UK government, local authorities and agencies make progress on flood protection and prevention. The real concern is not enough or slow progress is being made for the insurance industry to recommit to such arrangements in the future.

A spokesman for the Association of British Insurers, speaking on BBC Breakfast, confirmed more commitment from government was required and hinted at the need for a government  subsidy so at risk communities can be provided with affordable flood coverage.

The ABI and the Scottish Government compiled “A Joint Statement on the Provision of Flood Insurance” back in December 2008.

Freuchie, Falkland and the Newton of Falkland have all been recognised by SEPA as areas at risk of flooding.

Back in October 2009 we posted a warning about insurance renewals – you can find the blog post here. To summarise we warned of the need to declare to your insurance company the proximity of your property to a watercourse.

A Freuchie resident contacted us recently with a concerning story about their latest insurance renewal.

We live in Green Tree Brae but were not flooded last time. As we live at the top of the Brae, it is unlikely that we would ever flood, however – last month I received a renewal letter from the current Insurer, the PO, saying that our premium was going to increase from £292 to £700+. The insurer explained this was due to premiums going up and the majority of underwriters no longer insuring homes within 200m of a watercourse. I have always declared that we live near the burn as I know that otherwise your policy becomes void. I then spent days calling 30+ Insurers – none of which would even quote me until finally AXA agreed a price for us. It struck me that a huge % of Freuchie must be within 200m of a watercourse but would not have declared it to their Insurers and therefore many residents will not actually be covered by their Insurers. All a bit scarey heh?

In a further email the resident was concerned for other residents who may unknowingly or otherwise be failing to declare the fact they are close to a watercourse thereby making their policy invalid.

It isn’t just if you get flooded when the policies become invalid – it’s any policy and any claim at all that becomes invalid if you haven’t declared in advance that you live within 200m of a watercourse,  even if you claim for an iron burn on the carpet – you wouldn’t get anything! So basically people are paying for policies for no reason!

Everyone in the main village is most certainly within 200m of a watercourse, which by definition includes drainage ditches. By failing to declare your proximity to a watercourse you will be providing your insurer with a good reason to cancel your policy, keep your premiums and fail to pay out on any claim, of any type, you may have submitted. As the concerned resident has said, “… basically people are paying for policies for no reason!”

Thank you to the resident for sharing their story with us and providing permission for us to share it with you. Other residents experiencing issues with insurance renewals can get in contact with FFAG for advice and assistance.

Last years floods had a devastating impact on a great many families in all areas of Freuchie. It will come as no surprise, or perhaps it may, that for insurance purposes the vast majority of homes in Freuchie are now within 400m of a flood area.

Screen Capture: Money Supermarket online home insurance quotation form

Ensure you tick the correct boxes on your renewal or tell your insurer of this new fact that has come to light. Failure to do so may result in your policy being declared invalid or reduce future claim payments that are made.

Each insurer will no doubt take a different view of this situation, a view we’re sure will change as extreme weather patterns become more frequent. The only way to address these issues is to demonstrate that we as a community have done all we can, and have substantially reduced the risk of future floods.

Technorati Tags: flooding, Freuchie, insurance

Freuchie Flood Action Group has organised a short presentation and demonstration from UK Flood Barriers of their flood prevention and protection product offering. This will take place at 2pm on Sunday 29th March 2009 at Freuchie Cricket Club.

Anyone affected or at risk from flooding is welcome to attend, whether they be from Freuchie or other affected communities in Fife and beyond. Please just let us know you’re coming using our online Contact Us form.

Alan Ure of UK Flood Barriers will also be available to perform a free home survey to anyone that is interested. Again, Contact Us to arrange a suitable time for a survey.

In our opinion their airbrick protection product is the industry leader, as it is fully automatic, and the “Floodshield” barrier door is very simple to use. There are massive price reductions coming down the pipeline in a few weeks, compared with those indicated on the website at the moment, thereby making the products substantially cheaper than any of the competition. Fully protecting your home is now going to be very affordable at a price that won’t empty the wallet. 

Some additional information from UK Flood Barriers:

“Flood Prevention & Protection”

UK Flood Barriers Ltd have had a very busy summer due in no small part to recent appalling weather.   We work together with construction companies and housing associations, as well as assisting locally formed flood groups in villages throughout the country to decide on the most appropriate measures they can take to protect their homes and businesses. 

UK Flood Barriers specialise in offering solutions to the ever-increasing problem of water ingress into homes and businesses.  Climate change is here to stay and the signs are not looking favourable; the UK has suffered two of the wettest summers in a row, and flash flooding is sadly a common occurrence. 

UK Flood Barriers has a range of innovative “fit and forget” flood defence products, which, used in conjunction can prevent homes and businesses from flooding.  The benefit of our “fit & forget” range enables householders and businesses to be prepared well in advance of flood warnings, without having to panic-fit airbrick covers or experience the misery of sewage backflow.  Our door barriers complement the range and can be fitted in just two minutes.  They are strong and lightweight (weighing between 4.8 and 5.8kg each) and come ready to use, with no permanent fixtures or fittings required to the property.

UK Flood Barriers are constantly striving for improvements in innovation. We pride ourselves on providing user-friendly and cost effective solutions for our customers, to give them peace of mind that whichever flood solution they have chosen they will be covered in the event of future flooding.

Technorati Tags: airbrick, climate change, flood, flood defence, Floodshield, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, UK Flood Barriers

The ABI Flood Insurance talk last week was well attended and was crowned a grand success by those who came along. Arthur Philp delivered an informative presentation,  thereafter providing comprehensive responses to our questions and comments. Everyone went away better equipped to deal with post flood event clean-up and reassured their future flood insurance needs will be dealt with in an affordable and reasonably simple manner. A video of the talk is shown below.

Freuchie Flood Action Group would like to express our gratitude to Arthur Philp of the ABI and Norwich Union for his time and effort putting together the presentation.

Thank you to everyone who came along and contributed valuable feedback and questions.

Once again we are indebted to the Lomond Hills Hotel for providing the venue. Thank you Ronnie.

Resources:

  Video of the talk, hosted on Blip.TV

 Presentation deck in PDF format

You will need Acrobat Reader, a free download from Adobe, to be able to view the presentation deck.

Technorati Tags: ABI, Arthur Philp, flood, flooding, insurance, Lomond Hills Hotel, Norwich Union

Just a little reminder of our Insurance Industry talk tonight with Arthur Philp of the ABI. All the details are here.

Technorati Tags: ABI, Arthur Philp, flooding, insurance

The next public meeting of Freuchie Flood Action Group is a presentation from Arthur Philp from the Association of British Insurers (ABI), during which we shall hear about the insurance industries perspective of flooding and how this may affect all residents of Freuchie and other flood affected communities.

Once again, we’re delighted to have secured such a high profile expert speaker to come along to present to flood survivors and other residents of Freuchie and beyond. 

Thanks go again to the Lomond Hills Hotel for providing the venue.

Date & Time
5th February 2009 at 7:00 for 7:15pm

Venue
Lomond Hills Hotel – Freuchie

Abstract
During this presentation, Arthur will explain the Statement of Principles for flood insurance, with the main aim at the meeting to cover – "What property owners need to do to help protect their property from future flooding and to help their insurer provide them with the best possible terms for future insurance."

After a short presentation Arthur will offer an opportunity to touch upon the presentation content and other flood and insurance matters of interest within a question and answer session. Arthur doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but he is genuinely interested in hearing the problems from the audience’s perspective. This is an important area where the insurance industry recognises the need to understand problems better and ensure all concerned work towards providing better solutions.

The developments in the new Scottish Flooding Bill should be touched upon during the talk and Q&A session.

Speaker Biography
After graduating from Aberdeen University, in mathematics, Arthur Philp has spent virtually all of his career in insurance – initially within IT developing insurance administration systems, then in project management and for the last 20 years, in Underwriting Household Insurance.

Although employed by Norwich Union, he is currently on part-time secondment to the insurance industry trade body, the Association of British Insurers (ABI). This follows a seven month full time secondment as a member of a joint working group with Government on the review of the Statement of Principles for flood insurance. Current work involves completing negotiations on the Statement of Principles for flood insurance with the devolved Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as continuing work on provision of flood risk data to insurers from the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Northern Ireland Rivers Agency.

Within Norwich Union he is the Underwriting Development Manager for Household insurance, working within a department responsible for Underwriting Strategy. Arthur has been involved in considering the problems of insuring property against flood both within Norwich Union and with ABI since the early nineties when insurers had initial concerns about the increasing risk of coastal flooding in the South East of England due to climate change and, of course, significant river flooding in Perth (1993) and Glasgow (1994).

Arthur is a Chartered Insurer and has been working in the insurance industry for the past 35 years. He also represents the ABI in Scotland as a member of the Government’s Flooding Bill Advisory Group.

Technorati Tags: ABI, Arthur Philp, Fife, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, insurance

Interesting news article from the BBC, which has some alarming facts on climate change and how it is impacting on natural disasters, including our area of interest: flooding.

Technorati Tags: BBC, climate change, flooding, natural disasters

The removal and replacement of the bridge at Green Tree Brae in Freuchie got a mention in both the Fife Herald and The Courier this week.

Our last blog post on the ABI – Scottish Government Insurance Agreement on flooding got a mention in today’s Courier.

Good to see Freuchie Flood Action Group and our campaign being kept in the press. We need to again express our gratitude at the continuing support of the journalists at both newspapers.

Technorati Tags: ABI, Fife, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Freuchie Flood Action Group, Scottish Goverment

Some good news for the flood survivors of Freuchie, and other areas of Fife and Scotland affected by flooding, came yesterday when the Scottish Government and the insurance industry reached a joint agreement that will give homes and businesses greater protection.

The Scottish Government and the Association of British Insurers (ABI) have agreed to work together to minimise the flood risks and to help people quicker when flooding occurs.

Read the full announcement here.

Editorial Comment:
This is a very welcome development as the recent withdrawal of the previous agreement between the UK government and the insurance industry could have resulted in major problems with obtaining affordable insurance in a flood risk area.

Additionally, this should improve the current situation where most flood survivors are traumatised by the flood event, but then face ongoing stress and frustration from dealing with the insurance industry and their service providers, more particularly the assessors, builders and project managers. This press release from the National Flood Forum covers this subject in  more detail.

It will also make for a controversial talking point in our forthcoming talk from the Association of British Insurers… more details of the talk coming soon.

We will be watching with interest to see how this translates into affordable policy renewals and the on the ground delivery of services from local authorities, the insurance industry and the service providers involved in the clear-up and reinstatement work that follows a flood event.

Technorati Tags: ABI, Association of British Insurers, Fife, flood, flooding, Freuchie, Scottish Government