Flooding in Britain is an increasing problem. So do we re-think our long term building strategies or just get better house insurance?

There has been well documented and widespread flooding in England over the past few years. It all seemed to start with the surprise flooding of the Cornish village Boscastle as seen here from a picture on the BBC news website.

I live in Cornwall but had been staying at my fiancés house in Dublin at the time of the flood and was quite surprised to see my hometown engulfed by a raging river. I probably wasn’t as surprised as the people who woke up in Boscastle that morning to see caravans floating past their windows.

Why was it happening? According to the BBC it was a complex accumulation of events causing a phenomenon that may happen only once every 400 years (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3572360.stm) Rain had soaked the ground around the valley of Boscastle causing further rain to be directed straight down the valley and into the river. As a result of the extra water the river burst its banks and because there was no where else for the water to go it flowed right into the town causing havoc and terrible damage.

I really feel for the people who had had their houses flooded, seeing them on the news wading through their ruined living rooms. You know that under the water lies years of memories, lost treasures and irreplaceable bits and pieces that accumulate into some ones life.

A Panorama investigation revealed that planning application on flood plains had been going up every year for the last five years. Developers were cashing in on the publics need of for more housing. Targets for thousands more houses were looming over councils and applications were increasingly accepted. Despite some warnings from the forerunner of the Environment Agency, the National Rivers Authority for planners to consider additional safety measures when building their estates to account for any possible risk of flooding, many people didn’t pay enough attention.

People who had only recently bought their new homes found them engulfed in up to 6 ft of water, slicing the value of their new investment. Home insurance companies balked at the amount of money repairs were going to cost and many people saw their monthly insurance payments rising to fit the bills, even if their home was not in one of the areas flooded.

Many people will say that these floods are caused due to unstable global temperatures, causing the rain to fall and rivers to burst their banks more often. It would however be ignorant to suspect that use of land and poor irrigation systems in certain areas has had no effect on the cause of these disasters. Over building of land is bound to cause problems and environmental damage in itself but it is something that we can fix with better planning and more attention to the needs and characteristics of our surrounding environment.

The best thing you can do to protect your home if you live near a flood plain area is to make sure that you have a comprehensive and trustworthy home insurance policy. If you don’t get one now…you could seriously regret it.

If you are buying a new home, especially if it is on a new build estate then find out information from the National Rivers Authority on the proximity of the houses to flood plains and the likelihood or history of flooding in the area.

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