Home insurance at risk in flood-prone zones

Posted : 23-08-2006

Homeowners living in flood-prone areas of the UK could be left without home insurance cover after claims that some of the country's biggest insurance providers are planning to limit cover.

According to the Telegraph, Britain's home insurance providers have threatened to stop cover for homes in light of claims that the government is to cut spending on flood preventions.

Money saving measures at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), could lead to £15 million being cut from the Environment Agency's flood budget.

Flood experts speaking at a briefing in London said that money cuts to flood defences could mean Britain would be unprotected against a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.

Professor Edmund Penning-Rowsell, head of the Flood Hazard Research Centre at the University of Middlesex, said: "If there were such an event in London the effect would be economically completely devastating, just as it was in Louisiana."

Areas at risk from flooding include areas along the Thames and other low-lying regions of the south-east.


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