Dad whose house was ravaged by July 2021 floods told to pay £60k-a-year insurance

By Hannah Neary, Local Democracy Reporter

A father-of-three said he has to pay £60,000 a year for insurance after his London home was ravaged by flash floods in 2021.

Ollie Bishop’s family home in Maida Vale pooled with filthy water after mass flooding plagued the city on July 12 last year.

A year on, Ollie is battling huge financial stress and fears he will not be able to sell his property after being given extortionate quotes from insurers to protect his home.

Ollie, 45, said he has spent almost a year battling to get flood insurance for his lower ground-floor property and was eventually given a quote for £60,000 a year.

He said he hasn’t been told by the insurance companies why his claims were rejected or the offers are so high.

He added: “It’s just so unfair. We are going to keep trying to see what we can find.”

There was more than a month’s worth of rain in just over an hour on July 12 and drains were overwhelmed by the volume of water.

Ollie’s family moved into their house in 2014 and had never experienced any problems with flooding or drainage before.

He said the flooding caused wooden floors throughout the house to “completely buckle” and ruined their kitchen cupboards.

He added: “It completely puts your world upside down. It’s just devastating. It’s the anxiety of ‘what do we do if we get flooded again?”

Ollie also said there’s strong suspicion among locals that the flooding may have been exacerbated by a failure to regularly clean drains.

He said the water disappeared quickly after experts came to the scene and worked on nearby drains.

He added: “The speed that the water went away after about three or four hours of rain was really fast.

“It was like a plug hole had been opened and it was still raining. There’s a lot of questions to be answered.”

Thames Water has commissioned an independent review into the floods.

The final report, published today by engineering firm Mott MacDonald, has concluded they were largely caused by high levels of rainfall.

It said the floods were the responsibility of several organisations.

Thames Water is responsible for managing sewer flood risk, while local authorities are in charge of surface water flooding.

The report said: “The amount of rain that fell during the two storms was the main cause of flooding.

“Double the rainfall for the month fell during each of the events, vastly overwhelming the aboveground and below-ground systems.

“We also found that flows were held up on the surface as the gullies in some areas did not have the capacity to deal with the flow rates, and some may have been partially blocked.

“These types of events will continue to occur and, with climate change, are likely to may occur more frequently.

“As such, it is important that the response to flooding improves along with the resilience of the above and below-ground infrastructure.”

Thames Water was contacted for comment.

Pictured top: Ollie Bishop (Picture: Ollie Bishop)