Research by moneysupermarket.com showed homes in London, Hull and Grimsby are the most expensive to insure, with Shropshire, Devon and Pembrokeshire the cheapest.
Westminster in London is the most expensive area in UK to get a three bedroom home insured, with premiums up to £903 a year – 63 per cent more than the next most expensive areas in the UK, which is Hull at £552 a year. The Reform Report 2006 confirms that Westminster is one of the most ‘dangerous areas’ in London, together with Hackney, Islington and Southwark.
Richard Mason, director of insurance at moneysupermarket.com, said: “If your property is classified as being in a ‘high-risk area’ – whether that be for crime, flooding or subsidence, your insurance premiums will be comparatively high. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive areas is a massive 391 per cent, with a three bedroom homeowner in Bishops Castle, Shropshire paying just £185 a year. On the whole, the research shows that big cities, such as London, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh and Leeds feature prominently as the most expensive areas in contrast to more rural areas such as Shropshire, Devon and Suffolk.
“There are many reasons for these differences in price. Home insurers look at the crime rate in an area, therefore your likelihood of getting robbed or burgled, the average property price, the affluence of an area and whether where you live could be affected by flooding or subsidence. There are no hard and fast rules though, so an affluent area which is relatively free from crime may still suffer from high premiums because of the rebuild value of homes. I would call upon all insurers to assess premiums on a case by case basis, rather than black list whole cities as ‘high-risk’.”
