Environment Agency

A question about : Environment Agency

Around this time of the year my mister and I have both buildings and contents insurance coming up within a few weeks. Up until now, we have paid for these separately, as they have always come up in two consecutive months.

Although we always independently contacted insurers to find quotes for the buildings insurance, we had a broker who dealt with the contents insurance.

However, when we recently tried to get buildings insurance we had one company who refused point blank to insure us due to the area in which we live. But then when the contents insurance came up for renewal via the broker, he sent us a letter which stated that our premiums had gone up quite a lot. We have had no buildings or contents claims for over eight years. When I queried this and asked whether they had tried to gain alternative quotes, he stated that he had had difficulty due to the high risk of our postcode, and that our normal company, Zurich, was the only one willing to quote.

Admittedly we do live within about 25 metres of a river. However, that river is on a much lower level than our house. We estimate that if the river flooded and was lapping around our doorstep, then the houses on the riverbank would be just about submerged in water!

I got in touch with the Environment Agency concerning this and they have confirmed that our postcode covers a largish area and there are properties within this area that are high risk of flooding. However, they have confirmed that we are low risk and are forwarding a letter to us to this effect.

Surely it is wrong that we are being penalised along with our lower lying neighbouring houses as being in a high flood risk area, when we are actually classed as being low risk.

I was given to understand that the recent mapping of the country meant that insurance companies would then know who was at risk and who was not. This has obviously not happened in quite the way we envisaged.

So ... where do we go from here. I did try discussing this with one insurance company (prior to being advised for sure that we were classed as low risk and was given short shrift from the company who stated that they could not take my word over that of the big boys who state we are high risk.

As we get different quotes each year but mainly do this on-line, how do we check that they are using the correct information when giving us quotations?

Is this one for Martin to take up?

Best answers: