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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress has been made on providing an affordable insurance scheme for businesses affected by flooding.

The British Insurance Broker Association (BIBA) insurance product, launched in December 2016, provides flood insurance for many small businesses that have struggled to access it to-date. We understand that this new product is already providing insurance and has strong support from brokers. BIBA’s ‘Find a Broker Service’ can help business identify local brokers participating in the BIBA scheme and is accessible through BIBA's website, at: https://www.biba.org.uk/find-insurance/results/?insurance=908

The Government continues to work with commercial interests under the Property Level Resilience Roundtable to promote the uptake of measures that make properties resilient to flooding. These are measures that prevent water entering a property and speeding recovery when it does. One objective is to develop better standards and certification, enabling insurers to take greater account of resilience measures in the future.