Council flood data to cut insurance burden
THOUSANDS of Toowoomba region homeowners can potentially expect flood insurance costs to decrease following extensive work by the council on flood mapping.
The mapping and an associated amendment to the planning scheme was adopted by Toowoomba Regional Council at a committee level this week, and will come before an ordinary council meeting next Tuesday.
It is the result of eight years of work by the council, mandated by the State Government following the 2011 floods., and it fits into a broader body of works on flood mitigation and resilience.
Principal planner Heath Martin told Tuesday’s planning and environment committee meeting the 2011 floods prompted the insurance industry to “blanket” the Toowoomba region with a high risk flooding designation.
“So most property owners were paying higher insurance premiums because of that,” he said.
“And (the Insurance Council of Australia) said that was largely because of the lack of availability of more detailed information to understand flood risk across the region, and that having this information available to them would allow them to better target areas of risk and apply insurance premiums to those (riskier) areas, and not others.”
Mr Martin told the meeting the ICA put forward an example for the council, where they analysed the council’s flood risk information.
“500 properties classified as having high flood risk for insurance purposes … probably came down to 50 properties,” he said.
“So what we should see is that people’s insurance across the region should actually be reduced as a result of this, for many people.”
The ICA confirmed TRC had provided it with high-quality flood data for the National Flood Information Database.
“Any updated data may provide insurers with an opportunity to further finetune their premiums,” ICA head of communications Campbell Fuller said.