16/01/13

Water flows faster than broadband

by Roger House, FSB chairman, Kent and Medway region

Bad weather has meant many colleagues in other parts of the country have again been on the verge of disaster.

Trying to survive against the economy is one thing, but against the elements is another.

When disaster occurs, one major thing businesses seek is robust support from their insurer.

But the FSB is concerned that many in high-risk flood areas cannot get adequate insurance cover.

Further investment in flood defences would make it easier for businesses and householders to get insurance, protecting them against the cost of repair.

The FSB is urging the government to do more to protect small firms in high flood risk areas.

It should work closely with the Environment Agency on flood defences and in the immediate term it should reach a resolution with the insurance industry.

The Association of British Insurers and the government need to come to a swift decision on universal cover which ends in June 2013.

An FSB member in York has been flooded around 18 times in 2012 and is having to pay out around £10,000 each time to repair the damage. This is devastating.

It is unacceptable that small firms are paying out tens of thousands of pounds because they can’t get adequate insurance protection from their insurers.

Nor is it acceptable that flood defences aren’t robust enough to withstand the rain.

The money these firms are paying out could be used to grow their business or take on more staff.

Instead they have to pay themselves to repair the damage. This can’t carry on.

I have been banging the drum again on broadband, at the Economic Board and through that to the Local Enterprise Partnership.

We are slow at delivering a solution – slower than ditch water if the elemental analogy fits with the comments above.

At worst, broadband is an insurance against the inability to get out and about – it certainly proved so with the snow last year.

When I get letters on the one hand from a member in a mid-Kent location telling me his business estate has little broadband capacity and then we hear the government will invest in 12 cities with super fast broadband, I wonder who is thinking it through.

Of course any improvement is great but if one end of the pipe has fast running broadband and the other does not, we are limited to the slowest common denominator.

Far better that we invest across the whole in a faster solution and work our way upwards.