Insurers won’t invest to stop it happening again, claims victim

INSURERS TOOK a short-term view of the damage in the Dales and did little to invest in future protection, one victim of the summer floods said.

Ian Dawson, who has yet to return to his 18th century cottage in Reeth as loss assessors continue to calculate the bills, said simple repairs would do little to improve resilience in the event of a repeat.

His home was among eight in a stretch along Arkle Beck to have been on the front line last July.

He returned from a camping holiday in Cornwall to find water had entered from both the front and back.

“The river runs north to south as it passes our property and it came in through the back door, through the closed window, into the sewer system, up through the toilet and up again through the shower outlet,” he said.

“Then it swept around the outside of the house and came in through the front as well.

“There are six rooms on the ground floor and every one of them was flooded – and it was with filthy, badly contaminated water.”

He said neighbours without insurance were back in their homes, having spent “tens of thousands to get to where they are now”.

Others remained in temporary accommodation nearby.

“Our house is in the same condition now as it was at the beginning of September,” said Mr Dawson.

“Insurers in the main are not interested in improving a property so if a similar incident happens again you will suffer less and they will pay out less. “Financially I can see why but common sense would suggest it’s in everyone’s interest to make properties more resilient.” But he added: “I don’t know if there’s anywhere that could really cope with that volume of water.”

Mr Dawson said the devastation that greeted him when he returned the day after the deluge was “the sort of thing you’d see in a disaster movie and think could never really happen”.

He said: “Walls were down, stray bales were scattered – there were even boulders in the river.”