My name is Richard Bryant and, as well as being a member of Cranleigh Civic Society, I am a Chartered Insurance Broker and, as such, I am actively campaigning against building on flood plains because of the serious flood insurance issues.
I have been urging the Joint Planning Committee at Waverley Borough Council to seriously consider the human aspect of flooding, not just the effect on roads and infrastructure.
To suffer surface water flooding is in some ways worse than having a fire in your home – fires are normally one off but there is always the genuine worry with flooding that it will reoccur.
There are very serious flood insurance implications for new people buying a house in Cranleigh on the sites proposed by Berkeley Homes, Knowle Park Initiative and Crest Nicholson.
The owners of houses built before 1 January 2009, and which are at the highest risk of flooding, will be helped to obtain flood cover, at an affordable cost, under a special arrangement set up by the Association of British Insurers and the Government called Flood Re.
However this arrangement DOES NOT apply to houses built after 1 January 2009 as, after that date, new houses should be located to avoid flood risk and to avoid increasing flood risk elsewhere in line with national planning policies..
Of course, this will not be mentioned by the developers in their sales brochures – there will be no warning given to prospective house buyers of the potential for flooding and the insurance implications of this.
Even if a house escapes flooding by a few inches, but neighbouring houses are under water, the owner of that undamaged house could well have problems at their next insurance renewal as, when the land next floods, that previously undamaged house may well succumb to flooding – it will be considered as high risk..
So when the purchaser of a new house suffers flooding – that is bad enough but they then face:
- the value of their house plummeting
- the possibility of negative equity
- having to move to temporary accommodation for many months whilst their house is cleared of sewage and debris, dries out and is repaired
- the possibility that flood insurance may not available to them anymore or, if it is, having to pay a high premium and/or large excess
- being petrified, every time there is persistent heavy rain, that this hell will happen all over again to them
At the Cranleigh Parish Council meeting on 8 December not only did all the Councillors object to the Knowle Park Initiative outline planning application but they all cited flooding as their main concern.
Also, for the first time, they referred to the human aspect of suffering flooding. Also we were told that Waverley will, at long last, attach importance to Cranleigh’s flood history – for ages we have been telling them that statistics can be “manipulated” to serve any purpose but history is fact!
Councillors are now listening to what Cranleigh Civic Society are telling them on behalf of the Cranleigh Community!
As a child growing up in Mead Road at the time of the 1968 flood I can vouch for the human aspect, I still remember that smell… we sold and moved up to Rowley shortly afterwards.
I recall reading a ‘Neighbour Comment’ on the planning site saying the last big flood prior to ’68 was 1903 so I make the time for the next one 2033, possibly foreshortened by climate change making extreme events more frequent.
Of course, if the developers are so sure of a 1 in 1000 year risk then they would have no difficulty in incorporating say, a 1 in 100 year insurance policy within the cost of the house as the premium would be so small. However, anyone who has ever claimed on any type of insurance, home, car, health, travel, knows it doesn’t work like that. As soon as a known event has happened that new information on risk then gets priced into the premium… so when a developer says they have been assured by insurers they would be happy to cover the new houses, this is true until the next renewal i.e. one year, when any information would be incorporated and the risk adjusted premium calculated, or in the worst case, as Richard highlights, cover may actually be declined. Things like new housing higher up the settlement e.g. Amlets Lane, SwallowHurst, Horsham Road, may result in much greater peaks in discharge whose effects will be felt at the lower levels where KPI and Berkeleys proposed sites both lie.
Also I have already commented on the KPI that the flood data from the Environment Agency appears to be at best from 2011 and so fails to take account of the extreme events on 24/12/13 which were the highest recorded since that station opened in 2006.
Also I seem to recall when I enter my details for a quote a standard question is your house will 100m of a watercourse? The premium is no doubt adjusted accordingly.
Finally, least we forget..pictures of ’68 flood
http://www.freewebs.com/glebelandsreunited1974/apps/photos/photo?photoid=12124731
and From Cranleighvillage.net …going back even further to pre-history
Geologists tell us that Cranleigh was, in prehistoric times, the bed of an inland fresh-water lake. Under the Cranleigh Cricket Ground, there is a bed of fossilised winkle shells commonly called Sussex Marble, and during trenching operations in the neighbourhood quantities of this marble have been excavated.
Thank you for sharing this and for your support, it is so important that local knowledge is recorded and taken into account. We must continue to speak up for Cranleigh and fight against inappropriate development.
Interesting post. I am not surprised by the Cranleigh Parish Council declining the initiative. Rather, focussing on the problems at hand first would be the ideal process! I don’t think flooding would put of potential relocation for many people. The statistics talk a lot about Cranleigh with above average stats in health, education and employment. These factors will always count on any new potential home owner.
Interesting observation that people from your experience are not interested in flooding. Perhaps it is because they are not informed of the issue rather than not bothered.
After the Cranleigh Society meeting with Royal Sun Alliance we know that it is definitely an area that insurance companies are concerned about. Houses built after 1 Jan 2009 are not covered by FloodRe and insurance companies will continue to reserve the right to refuse insurance on entire new housing estates built in areas of high flood risk.