This group has tended to find that premiums have been raised to unaffordable levels, or that flood cover was refused.
The current agreement says that insurers must include flood cover as standard for properties built before 1 January 2009, where the risk of flooding is low.
Recent FSB research suggests around 75,000 smaller businesses at risk of flooding have run into difficulties finding insurance, while another 50,000 have been refused flood cover.
Insurers agreed to bundle flood cover into all home-insurance policies, so that the risk posed by some would be spread among the many.
In some cases in will be worth terminating an existing policy and switching to a firm that is signed up if flood cover is not currently offered.
Insurers and the government have made references to the an insurance scheme, Flood Re, which comes into effect from April and claims to guarantee affordable flood cover.
One year, after a week of storms, a raging flood covered the line of rocks that we used to cross the stream.
But companies also agreed to cover at-risk households who already have flood cover to renew automatically with the same insurer, as long as flood defences are planned to be in place within five years.
When severe floods this summer left a large part of the country under water, the firm announced that it would pay any damage claims from its household and small-business clients—even if their property insurance did not include flood cover.
Developed by the insurance industry, with government backing, Flood Re was set up after insurers said they were no longer prepared to offer universal flood cover to households who had been flooded in the past.
