Deal cut to protect flood-prone homes

16 July 2008
 
The Government has pledged to create a ‘long-term investment strategy’ to reduce the impacts of flooding in a deal with the Association of British Insurers (ABI) to help home-owners get insurance.

The ‘statement of principles’, an ongoing agreement between the Government and the ABI, has seen DEFRA promise to reduce the impacts of flooding, through education, better prediction and preventing inappropriate development.

This, it said, could be delivered with a 25-year investment strategy. In return, the ABI said it would insure any property with less than a one in 75 chance of flooding annually, together with buildings at significantly-higher risk, if the level was to be reduced ‘to an acceptable level’ within five years.

The Government will use the Environment Agency to provide a more accurate risk assessment for river and coastal flooding by January 2009, and make these publicly accessible. It will also publish a draft Floods and Water Bill in spring 2009 (Surveyor, 19 June 2008), which will formally charge councils with responsibility for surface water flooding. This follows from the Pitt review and the Government’s Water Strategy, Future Water.

Based on the Environment Agency’s scenarios modelling work of flood and coastal risk management, to be published in spring 2009, the Government will put in place a long-term investment strategy to reduce flood risk, prior to the next spending review. No details are currently available, but DEFRA said it would assess funding needs, allocation of resources, and delivery over the medium and long term.

The Civil Engineering Contractors’ Association said such a move was long overdue. ‘Although contractors will welcome this approach, it’s a shame it took the insurance industry to convince the Government to take flood defence more seriously,’ said CECA director, Rosemary Beales.

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