Summer floods 2007 - MORE TH>N comments six months on

Comment on the Pitt review. MORE TH>N to send out £200 worth of Christmas presents to flood victims who are still not back in their homes

With a month's worth of rain falling in a day, the UK was hit by two major floods this summer.

The first around 20-25 June broadly affected Hull, Doncaster and Sheffield and the second from 20 July caused widespread damage in Gloucester, Worcester, Oxford and areas of South West London.

The scale and extent of the flooding was unprecedented but thanks to years of experience of responding to emergency situations Royal and SunAlliance and MORE TH>N were well prepared to respond immediately.

Commenting on the interim report of the Pitt review into this summer's floods, Mike Holliday-Williams, managing director of MORE TH>N said: " We're pleased that Sir Michael Pitt and his team have acknowledged many of the concerns put forward by the insurance industry.

We hope that the recommendations will form part of some positive new initiatives on flooding during 2008.

Immediate priorities should be focused on increased spending on the building and maintenance of flood defences, planning decisions which avoid building on flood plains, and a more joined-up approach to managing flood risk by the different authorities involved.Sir Pitt is calling this summer's floods a 'wake up call' for the country - echoing the exact comments made by the then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott after severe floods in York in November 2000.

Seven years on and we are still facing similar issues.

We believe that action is needed now to bring forward the planned increase in flood defence spending and to restrict building on flood plains.

Although one of the report's interim conclusions is that PPS25 should be rigorously applied by local planning authorities, we do not believe this is happening as evidenced by the fact that last year 13 major developments were given the go ahead despite the Environment Agency's objections.

Inappropriate building not only presents a high flood risk to the new development but also to the surrounding existing properties.

VITAL STATISTICS? HOW DID MORE TH>N REACT? In the summer, we received over 6000 weather related claims.

90% of customers were contacted within 24 hours.

100% of customers were contacted within 72 hours.

85% of customers were visited by one of our claims specialists within 5 days.

100% of customers were visited within 8 days.

We recruited an additional 30 call centre staff to handle the additional volume and proactively contacted all our customers.

We have approximately 1000 contractors working for us now ? ready to act if the floods reoccur.

PROVIDING LOCAL HELP ON THE GROUND: We set up local Emergency Response Centres in the worst affected areas and held surgeries for all residents, not just our own customers.

We also worked with Focus DIY to help those people without insurance by distributing discount cards for use in its stores.

BRINGING SOME FESTIVE CHEER: Over seventy per cent of the flood-hit families insured by MORE TH>N are already back in their homes, but we recognise that some people with the most severe damage will be facing Christmas in temporary accomodation.

Our claims teams have asked these people what's on their Christmas lists and then hand-delivered them up to £200 worth of presents.

MANPOWER AND PREPARATION: We have a well-defined process in place to monitor when weather related disaster might be about to strike.

Anticipated rainfall, windspeeds and gust levels are all tracked daily in-house, enabling us to mobilise both our claims centres and in-house Loss Adjusting Service to respond immediately.

Our Emergency Response Team is permanently on standby and has responded to all major incidents in the last five years, being first on the scene during the Boscastle and Carlisle floods and the Buncefield oil depot fire.In the event of an emergency, one of our experienced National Events Co-ordinators takes charge of the situation, deploying members of our Emergency Response Team to the affected areas often at very short notice, including weekends.

Our immediate priority is to establish how many of our customers have been affected.

Our Emergency Response Team will identify the postcode areas under water enabling our claims centres to produce a list of all customers that may need our help.

We then start contacting these people to find out if they have suffered any damage.

Experienced claims staff operate a triage system ? similar to a hospital A and E department ? prioritising those cases that require urgent attention.

For those people who need urgent financial support, for example to buy clothes, we are able to make emergency payments by bank transfer directly into their bank account.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK "This is excellent, I feel totally cared for and supported knowing someone is looking after me throughout my plight" "I would like to thank you for the speed and professional manor you have dealt with my claim, at this time insurance companies have had bad publicity but you and your team at Royal and SunAlliance have been brilliant in dealing with my claim." "Many thanks for your help this afternoon, it is lovely to deal with someone who seemed genuinely concerned and helpful." "Thank you very much for your helpful email.

You must have an enormous load on ? I noted how late in the evening you wrote to us, so many thanks for your kindness and help." "Can I just take this opportunity to thank you for your calm, caring and helpful manner which you have displayed whilst assisting us through this traumatic time.

; We really appreciate everything.

It's just really nice to know that you are at the end of the phone to help solve any problems that we have encountered, and have jumped to the rescue no matter how big or small." "We would just like to record our thanks and appreciation for the incredibly professional, prompt and helpful support your team have provided".

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