Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will have discussions with providers of the Flood Re scheme on the potential merits of extending the scheme to cover businesses.

The Flood Re scheme allows for insurers to offer discounted premiums to domestic properties. Flood Re is funded via a levy on UK household insurers. Expanding the scope of Flood Re to cover businesses would create a new levy on businesses, and could result in businesses across the country, and indirectly customers, subsidising profit-making organisations located at flood risk.

There is no evidence of a systemic problem for businesses at high flood risk not accessing insurance.

Businesses in high flood risk areas can shop around for the best insurance quote and could consider using an appropriate broker. There are a number of products being offered to businesses by the industry such as the British Insurers Brokers’ Association (BIBA) Commercial Property scheme to help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and provide flood cover for those that are ineligible for Flood Re.

We are working with the insurance industry and the wider commercial sector to help businesses become more resilient to flooding through the joint government and industry Property Flood Resilience (PFR) roundtable.