Technology helps guard homeowners from floods

New technology is bringing down home insurance premiums for those who live in areas with flood warnings, according to one home insurance company.

Norwich Union, an insurance firm, says that it has invested a great deal in new digital flood maps which enable the firm to judge the flood risk of each individual house and thus give a personalised price on each premium.

Paul Redington, property claims manager at Norwich Union, said: "It''s a lot more sophisticated than it used to be when we would simply just react.

"We now try and pre-empt a situation. That doesn''t mean we can predict them all at the moment we are seeing an increased number of severe weather events which are quite localised."

This follows severe flooding in central Scotland which forced more than 40 people in Kinross to abandon their homes on Wednesday night.

Mr Redington added that repairing your home after flood damage can take anything up to six months in the most serious cases because you need to ensure everything is thoroughly dried out before starting repair work.


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