Aviva boss warns more homes will be uninsurable due to flood risk

Homes are being built today that could become uninsurable in the future due to the risk of flooding, the boss of insurance giant Aviva has said.

Amanda Blanc said the risk of flooding is “absolutely increasing”, but based on current building patterns 115,000 new homes will be built in flood zones in the next decade.

“That doesn’t seem to me to make sense. We need to think about where those homes are being built,” she told the BBC.

About 6.3 million homes and businesses in England are at risk of flooding, according to the Environment Agency, and Aviva research found one in nine homes built between 2022 and 2024 are at medium to high risk of flooding.

Blanc told the BBC’s Big Boss Interview podcast that England was “for sure” building homes that might be uninsurable at some point in the future.

“It’s very well known where these flooding areas are. Let’s think very carefully about homes that are being built.”

Blanc said construction that borders those flood zones also needs a different approach.

“You can do all sorts of different things to your property to make it more or less vulnerable to flood,” she said.

According to Aviva’s research, nearly a third of new homes built in 2024 will be at risk of some flooding by 2050, and one in seven would be at medium to high risk of flooding as extreme weather becomes more acute.

Earlier this year the Met Office estimated that with current levels of global warming, record-breaking wet winters like the one experienced in the UK in 2023-2024 have gone from once in 80-year events to once in 20-year events.

The BBC has approached the government for comment.