Once again floods, which have become a persistent issue to UK homeowners, insurers and the government etc, are provoking furthers concerns as the Association of British Insurers (ABI) last week warned that its members may not be able to continue offering home insurance cover to homes that are vulnerable to the disaster.

This warning, which highlights the frustration insurers have faced in recent years, comes as another floods caused havoc in parts of the UK, even as people await a possible repeat of the more devastating summer floods.

Of course this statement from the group must have caused people to wonder why must it come from them or why now, but it still remains that the problem, like the then chaotic situation at Heathrow’s newly launched Terminal 5, requires a better response from the government than we are seeing currently.

In an interim report on the floods of summer 2007 in the UK, Sir Michael Pitt urged the government to set out clearer roles and responsibilities for organisations involved in surface flooding management, as well as for greater coordination and cooperation.

A move was thus made by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs via a proposed bill for Floods and Water with the aim of better preparing the country for the risks of the impending disaster. Yet floods have been amazingly successful in rendering every effort futile.

The near-failure on the part of the government, perhaps, forced the ABI to insist that unless the government takes steps to protect the homes from flooding by putting in place adequate defences they may become uninsurable. The association further urged the government to adopt a more co-ordinated approach and carry out a thorough assessment of the floods risk, focusing on the problem of overflowing drains.

This position is not unconnected to its observation that more than half of the 180,000 floods insurance claims its members handled after the 2007 summer’s flooding were floods that had been caused by water coming up through drains.

Marking the anniversary of the disaster at an event it dubbed ‘Floods – One Year On’ at London’s Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre a week ago, the ABI said its members had agreed to offer cover to the endangered properties at a price that reflects risk, providing the government puts adequate floods defences in place. But the ABI warned that the insurance premiums could become unaffordable if the risk increases substantially.

In reality, everyone needs to understand that as the risk continues to grow insurers could find it very hard to be able to cope with making pay outs and in the end premiums would either rise in cost or insurers would make good their threat and refuse to insure homes in areas that are of high floods risks.

Having paid out over £3 billion following the floods of last summers, one cannot but agree with the ABI’s director of general insurance and health, Nick Starling, that planning for the future is very important in order to cut a repeat of the damage caused by last year’s floods. This will definitely save the cost for insurers and loss for households and ensure that companies providing insurance protection do not run out of business.