New UK homes in flood-risk areas could become uninsurable, says Aviva boss

The boss of Britain’s biggest insurer has warned that homes being built now could become uninsurable in the future because they are sited in flood-risk areas.

Amanda Blanc, the chief executive of Aviva, said the flooding threat was “absolutely increasing”. Assuming current construction patterns continue, 115,000 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 6.3m homes and businesses in England are at risk of flooding, according to the Environment Agency. This could increase to around 8m, or one in four properties, by mid-century as the climate crisis worsens, it warned in August.

Blanc told the BBC’s Big Boss Interview podcast that England was “for sure” building properties that might become uninsurable in the future.

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

She said a lot could be done to mitigate damage, adding: “You can do all sorts of different things to your property to make it more or less vulnerable to flood.”

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 will be at medium-to-high risk of flooding.

After the very wet and stormy winter in the UK in 2023-24, the Met Office estimated that such winters had gone from once in 80-year events to once in 20-year events.

Blanc also called on the government to avoid policy “kite flying” before John Healey’s first budget as chancellor on 28 October.

Aviva is a leading private pension provider, and speculation about changes to pensions led to a jump in withdrawals in the run-up to the budget in the last two years.

“Effectively we saw in the last year 30 times the normal withdrawal from pensions that we would normally see, which is clearly something which customers may regret afterwards because once you take your tax-free lump sum out, you can’t put it back in,” she said.

“So we would say be very, very thoughtful about the things that you are testing, thinking about.”