More homes built on floodplains

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Analysis of official data by Channel 4's Dispatches revealed Boston in Lincolnshire - where 57% of homeowners are at "significant risk" - to be the most susceptible to flood waters.

In the programme, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, Baroness Young, calls on insurers to refuse insurance to houses built on floodplains against advice.

Dispatches: Britain Under Water reports that an increasing number of new homes are being built on Britain's floodplains.

This has led to a surge in the number of homes at "significant risk" of flooding - described as having a one in 75 chance of flooding in any given year.

In Boston, a market town with a population of around 65,000, 15,906 homes are placed in this category.

In Windsor and Maidenhead - second on the list - one in five homeowners face the same level of danger.

The programme reports that in addition to the potential threat to homes, more than 2,000 energy installations are at significant risk of flooding. It raises concern over whether the authorities are setting aside adequate resources to battle the threat.

Baroness Young suggests insurers could help the situation by hardening their stance against those opting to live in new builds in flood risk areas.

She tells Dispatches: "Many of the properties that flooded in the summer were built in the 60s and 70s and the 80s and we've got a huge backlog of that in the floodplain now and we don't want to increase that by building any more. We'd like the ABI to be tougher - we'd like the insurance companies to be tougher and to simply refuse to insure properties built on the floodplain against our advice. But we've not persuaded the insurance industry en masse to do that."