Important. You should read this before proceeding. TWO QUOTES ARE BETTER THAN ONE.
That’s why we offer you two options. For higher risk insurance in particular we strongly recommend that in addition to clicking the online link below, you also complete and submit the call-back form lower down this page. This way you will receive top quality advice and quotes from two independent specialists enabling you to compare cover and costs before you decide.
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We have worked in conjunction with UK insurers for many years to provide specialist insurance’s for UK consumers. As a result of this and in combination with many of the UK’s major insurance providers we are now able to give you access to House Insurance suitable for properties subject to a higher than normal risk of flooding and properties that have experienced flood damage.
Our highly experienced specialists have appeared on BBC Television providing advice on such problems.
We recommend that you complete the ring back request form below and we will endeavour to contact you within one hour. Please leave details if possible enabling us to contact you during office hours (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm).
Flood Risk in the UK
For many people, flooding is a fact of life. There are more than 2 million homes at risk from coastal or inland flooding (10 % of total homes in the UK), and around 400,000 homes at very high risk of flooding (greater than 1.3 % annual probability or 1-in-75 chance).
The UK is unique in offering flood cover as a standard feature of household insurance policies. Unlike much of Europe and worldwide, cover for home insurance in flood risk areas is widely available to the UK’s 23.5 million householders.
In the long term, this situation could worsen, unless we take action to reduce flood risk to people and property. Climate change will increase winter rainfall, the frequency of heavy rainfall, and sea levels and storm surge heights. With no change in Government policies or spending, climate change could increase the number of properties at risk of flooding to 3.5 million. Furthermore, continued pressure on land could mean even more new developments being situated in floodplains making house insurance more expensive due to the increased flood risk.
Flood Insurance in the UK
By spreading risk across policy-holders, insurance enables householders and businesses to minimize the financial cost of damage from flooding. In the modern competitive insurance market, premiums reflect the risks that customers face. This enables insurance to be offered at very competitive prices to customers living in low flood risk areas.
After the widespread flooding in Autumn 2000, when around 10,000 properties were flooded and the costs to the insurance industry exceeded £1 billion, the ABI worked closely with the Government to agree terms through which the industry would continue to provide flood risk cover for the vast majority of households in the country. Further details can be found in the ABI report Renewing the Partnership.
In 2005, ABI published an assessment of progress on flood management on the fifth anniversary of the Autumn 2000 floods. See press notice for further details.
Source Association of British Insurers
More information on how the likelihood of flood in your area affects your home insurance.
In 2003, the ABI and their member companies, agreed to continue offering home insurance for properties and businesses located in many of the UK’s flood risk areas. The Environment Agency is working with the Association of British Insurers (ABI) to support the insurance industry’s commitment to continue offering flood risk insurance to the vast majority of homes and businesses in flood risk areas.
While the Environment Agency has no role in determining insurance cover, they do share a common goal with the ABI to improve flood mapping and provide the best available information to the public.
To assist householders and insurers in providing insurance, The Environment Agency have supplied ABI member insurance companies with information that gives a national assessment of likelihood of flooding, from rivers and the sea, within the floodplain taking into account flood defenses. It provides a first step for insurers in assessing insurance and providing house insurance in flood risk areas. To get a better understanding of the flood risk attached to a particular home, insurance companies refer to a flood map that was originally devised by the Environment Agency.
Testimonials
Our home has a “history” of subsidence when, in 1989, the house was adversely affected by the close proximity of trees whose roots were drawing water from beneath the house. As our home dates from the Victorian period when foundations were not as substantial as contemporary builds, cracks developed on the front and back walls. Removal of the trees corrected the problem, but now our home has an insurance history which tends to frighten the majority of companies.
This is further complicated since 2007 by an industry fear of any properties near a watercourse. I have been asked if we live within 30m, 150m, 250m, even 1000m of a watercourse that has flooded in the past. Despite the fact that our house has never been flooded, our proximity to the local dyke which affected our neighbours, severely restricted our ability to obtain insurance. Until we were given your telephone number by the National Flood Forum, no one wanted to know about our flood defences since 2007 or steps that the local council had taken to minimize backflow due to a silted up road bridge and the cleaning of local drains.
We’re still getting junk mail advertising discounted prices for home insurance, but the minute you tell the “advisor” at Saga, Churchill, More Than and others that you have history, they don’t want to know. Or if a company is willing to give a quote, it can be as much as £1400 for a small, three-bedroom house. We were insured through Saga for 12 months. When our renewal papers arrived, I noticed that one of the declarations had changed from “The property has never been flooded” (2008) to “the property is not within 150m of a watercourse that has flooded” (2009). When I informed them that the declaration was now a Yes, Saga refunded part payment without actually saying that the policy was cancelled. My oversight regarding this credit at that time meant that we were without cover for 11 months.
Millions of people in the UK have a history of subsidence, 80% due to trees. Millions of people also live near streams and rivers and, with more unpredictable weather due to climate change, those people often find themselves unable to obtain affordable cover. I know that 2 of our neighbours have no insurance at this time.
Although our new policy is a bit more expensive than in the past, it is not excessive considering that the underwriters are assuming a slightly elevated level of risk. Neil, thank you for helping us through a very worrying and frustrating period.
We are the owners of a property in Waterloo St, Cockermouth, Cumbria CA13. Cockermouth was subject to a catastrophic flood in November 2009 and our house was under seven foot of water. We have since moved out into another property and decided to let out our house in Cockermouth. This property has been reinstated and we have been attempting to secure insurance at a realistic and reasonable rate. This has proved to be very difficult. We have been told by numerous insurance companies that they are not quoting for our postcode, and were informed by our existing insurers that the new policy premium would be between £3,000 and £5,000 per annum, possibly more, with a very considerable excess. They would also require a lot of documentation including a government report on the flooding risk at our property. This seemed unreasonable and unduly onerous. In desperation we contacted the National Flood Forum who put us in touch with Neil Cook at Equity and General. Neil was in a position to offer insurance immediately that was both affordable and reasonable. We are very grateful to Neil for his assistance and the sympathetic manner in which he handled our circumstances he quoted a premium 75% less than we had been offered.
You know how it is…. You see the house you want, and you fall in love with it. Everything was in place – the house had no chain, the finance was affordable, my offer was accepted…. It should have been a real formality to complete. As the sale proceeded, my Conveyancer discovered that the property had been subject to a recent subsidence claim; As a result the mortgage offer was subject to my ability to obtain insurance cover.
At that point I should have pulled out. Like most people, I hear ‘subsidence’ and think ‘trouble’ – but luckily my wife, being a clever woman, read the details and explained that it shouldn’t be a problem. We were so emotionally sold on the house that we kept going. I contacted a subsidence ‘specialist’ broker, who told me he couldn’t offer a policy, as the claim was so recent, but that the current insurer was obliged to offer cover. It would be ok – people were helping and advising us, and they would know what to do.
Or so I thought.
My financial advisor had been very keen to obtain insurance for me, so I put the matter in her hands – after all, she had access to “all of the market” at her finger tips (she did keep telling me this). Weeks went by….. And the matter was unresolved, and getting nowhere. I went in to her office, because it had become clear that I had to manage this myself. This resulted in several days of personal enquiries, phone calls, emails …. And by now I was worried. No-one would offer me cover. I would give details, to hear “Oh, I’m sorry – we don’t cover that postcode area”, or “We only insure over 50′s” – and even to get this far I had negotiated the automated phone line, and given the same details three times. My enquires with the current insurer were no better – I just couldn’t get past the first hurdle.
My wife and I discussed it that night, and we went to bed pretty much resigned to the thought that we would lose the house.
I couldn’t sleep, so at 1am I got up, went on line and started searching again. I saw the website, and decided that yet another enquiry wouldn’t hurt.
Neil called me in the morning, and immediately I knew that this would be different. Neil knew exactly what I had been facing, and exactly why – better than that, he knew how to get me the cover that I needed. Finally, after being given the run-around by systems and processes, I was in the hands of someone who knew how to get through it all for MY benefit, and wouldn’t give up at the first sign of trouble.
I called my wife; This was a very happy call, as once again the dream is on!
When you think about insurance, it is one of those chores that everyone deals with. Now the internet is a wonderful thing, (its how I found Neil!) and it has certainly changed the way we buy insurance and similar products; Trouble is, when you do not fit the perfect profile in every way, the computer leaves you stranded.
Thanks Neil – Get me that quote! NEIL GOT ME THAT QUOTE!
Testimonial from Drs Stella and Mike Khan
Mill House, Mill Lane,
Newbold-on-Stour,
Warwickshire CV37 8DR
June 2011
We were one of the many households living near a river that were flooded in June 2007 following sustained rainfall leading to rising river levels.
The devastating experience of trying to live and work ‘normally’ whilst reinstating your home to one that is habitable again (18 months), left us in no doubt that we would do all we could to flood-proof our property. Our buildings insurance paid to reinstate our home to its former state, but any changes to make our property flood-proof and flood-resistance would have to be left to our own funds. We indeed poured a considerable amount of our own money making changes internally and externally including building an extension above flood level to house a new kitchen and raising electrics above flood level. In addition, no plaster exists on the walls which are now water proof/resistant, thus greatly speeding up the drying out process and also preventing major refurbishment, and all windows and doors are flood resistant. We now have only a single door at flood level and this is heavily protected by 3 layers of flood defences. Should flood water enter the property then there is no plaster to be damaged, no electrics at flood level and all heating, pipe work and boilers are protected.
Sadly, our insurers were uninterested and our premiums rose by more than 300%!
We were then to be informed by our brokers in January 2011 that our insurers were completely withdrawing from the home insurance market and that we would have to find alternative cover. After sending our brokers a detailed list of the flood preventative/resistant changes we had made, we were to wait more than a month before being offered potential cover from just one insurance company. However, although they were impressed with all the changes we had made, this made no real difference as they were only interested in a ‘flood risk assessment’ from the Environment Agency (EA) or a hydrologist that could assure them that we were not in a high risk area and that changes had been made to the river course which would reduce the risk of future flooding. We subsequently obtained a report from the EA which put our area at moderate to high risk, and which also stated that no plans were in place for our council to make changes to our river course. Our requests for someone to come and look at our particular property and take into account the external defences, were declined.
We then explored the possibility of engaging a hydrologist whose report might look at our property more favourably – the cost involved was estimated at around £1000. Before committing to this expense we decided to contact other insurance companies ourselves using the internet. Several weeks of lengthy phone calls, providing detailed information, left us disheartened, frustrated and let-down. None of the insurance companies we contacted that promote themselves as specializing in flood cover, were willing to cover us, despite all the changes we had made, giving reasons that included one of the following: length of time since being flooded less than 5 years; insurance claim above a certain limit; too near river course; no plans for council to modify river course etc. Some insurance brokers who had promised to get back to us within 24hrs with offers of cover, never bothered at all. Contacting ABI (Association of British Insurers) or BIBA was of no benefit at all!
Just when we were beginning to accept that we would have no future flood cover, we came across a website, Flood-Risk-Home-Insurance.co.uk, and read some testimonials from people who had been in a similar situation to ourselves, thanking Neil Cook of TR Youngs Insurance Brokers. As we had nothing left to lose, we contacted Neil, and that first phone call sounded too good to be true! After explaining the whole story to Neil, it was a matter of hours before he had found us potential insurance cover provided we could supply proof of flood defence measures undertaken. Moreover, the insurance premium was far more reasonable compared to our current insurance. Although our excess was increased, we are happy to have the security of being covered for flood damage. All the paperwork and further communication could not have been more efficient. We are so grateful for the help and support given by Neil and TR Youngs Insurance Brokers to victims like us who despite making huge efforts to prevent further flood damage to our home, have been completely let down by so many insurance companies who advertise themselves as specializing in flood risk cover.
