Millions of households will be unable to afford flood insurance due to exclusions in the Government’s Water Bill, an alliance of organisations are warning.
The alliance of property industry leaders and the Council of Mortgage Landers (CML) said the ‘unexpected’ exclusion of a number of properties to be covered by the Flood Re proposals will leave nine million homes without access to affordable flood insurance.
Flood Re, developed by the Government and the Association of British Insurers, is a not-for-profit scheme to ensure flood insurance remains affordable and widely available. However, the alliance said as it stands, Flood Re will exclude most buildings for cover including council homes, leasehold properties, the private rented sector and housing association homes.
Paul Smee, director general of the CML, said: ‘We find it difficult to believe that the original policy intention was to exclude a whole swathe of residential property from the stated aim of ensuring that affordable flood insurance continued to be available across the market.
‘Given that this appears to be an unintended consequence, we strongly urge legislators and the insurance industry to reconsider the proposals and ensure flood cover remains available on homes as people would expect.’
Ian Fletcher, director of policy at the British Property Federation, said: ‘Every property that is occupied is somebody’s home. Flood doesn’t discriminate between freehold and leasehold, owner-occupation and renting, and it will be small comfort for tenants who have contents cover if their home itself is left uninhabitable. If a property is at risk, regardless of its status, it needs to be able to insure itself affordably against disaster, not least because that is a condition of most mortgages.”
‘Universality of flood cover is something that the citizens of the UK cherish and should not be given away so easily in this deal. Increased surface water flooding means you don’t need to live next to the sea or a river to be impacted by flood these days, it can happen to most of us. Depriving leasehold property owners, including millions of owner-occupiers, access to Flood Re is frankly unbelievable.’
The Water Bill will get its second reading in the House of Lords on 27th January.
