BIBA: Flood mapping "important for the insurance industry"

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BIBA: Flood mapping "important for the insurance industry"

Thu 26th Jun 2008

Flood mapping is crucial to help insurers assess the safety of homes, the British Insurance Brokers' Association (BIBA) said yesterday.

Graeme Trudgill, technical and corporate affairs executive of BIBA, was responding to Sir Michael Pitt's report of the 2007 floods.

The Pitt report called for several measures including local authorities drawing up maps of drainage ditches and streams.

Mr Trudgill said flood maps were "really important for the insurance industry" to help assess whether homes were safe or not.

He added that people in risk areas could then find out what action their local authority was taking, or arrange their own flood defence.

Mr Trudgill said that nobody had been responsible for surface water runoff, a cause of millions of pounds of damage last year, despite increased urbanisation.

The Pitt recommends monthly summaries of flood recovery progress, the establishment of a National Resilience Forum for national planning for flooding and other emergencies, and for trained Armed Forces personnel to advise on the logistics of wide-area civil emergencies.

Last summer, insurers handled 180,000 claims and paid out over £3 billion, according to the Association of British Insurers.

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