Spread flood risk

Sir – I was horrified to read that by 2013 no insurance company will accept property in a flood risk area. At the moment you can only get insurance if you stay with your existing company. I understand specialist insurance companies will accept flood risk properties but they are asking premiums of over £1,000 with £20,000 excess. This is totally unacceptable. Why can’t insurance companies accept there is a problem which will not go away. Get together, and go back to insurance basics — ie spread the risk. Let’s face it, we’ve all created the problem via global warming, not just the unfortunates who get flooded. Why doesn’t everybody have to pay a small flood premium to their policy. The minority who are in a flood area could then be offered building policies at a sensible premium, together with a sensible excess, and be free to change companies like everybody else. Do insurance companies realise that their present policy has devalued everybody in a flood risk area and in many cases made the property unsaleable. The installation of flood defences at no small cost doesn’t appear to be of any interest to insurance companies, even if the property has never been flooded, It’s the postcode that decides the matter. When you try to sell the property nobody will want it, or be offered a mortgage if they can’t get insurance. I have tried to get my council tax reduced, but the law will not accept flooding as sufficient reason to reduce council tax. They even state that this decision is final and there is no right of appeal against the decision. Surely until insurance companies stop devaluing property and making it unsaleable, they have a duty to reflect this in the council tax banding. I know work has been done to make the Letcombe Brook less likely to flood, but how long will it take for this to be reflected in the postcode and will the council bear this in mind when granting permission to build new houses?