Damage from Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin totals almost £500 million

Over 177,000 claims were made to insurers for damage to property

Author: Sarah YeomanPublished 29th Apr 2022

Insurers have estimated the damage caused by a number of storms in February, that ripped through Cornwall, could total just under £500 million.

Around 177,000 individual claims were made nationwide for damages to property including homes, cars and businesses as the UK felt the force from Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has since estimated that the long stretch of poor weather has cost insurance companies around £497 million in payouts across the country.

When broken down, property damage to homes and businesses made up the majority of claims, with the total amount nearing £473 million.

Car damage also cost insurance companies around £23 million, whilst emergency payments to relieve the immediate hardship of the storms reached £13 million.

In addition to this, an extra £2.2 million was expected to have been given out to put those whose homes were destroyed by the storms in temporary accommodation, whilst repairs to their homes were made.

The total bill for insurance companies is not unfamiliar, however. In February 2020, a series of storms - Ciara, Dennis and Jorge - swept across the UK, causing £543 million worth of damage.

Speaking about the calculations, the ABI's senior policy adviser for general insurance, Sarah Brodie said that despite the large payouts, this is what insurance is meant for.

"Storms and floods are exactly the type of unwelcome event that insurance protects against," she said.

"When bad weather strikes, the priority for insurers is always to do all they can to help their customers recover from what can be a traumatic and costly experience as quickly as possible."

She added: "From making immediate emergency payments where needed, arranging temporary alternative accommodation while badly damaged properties are being repaired, to organising repairs, insurers continue to support their customers whenever storms strike."

But we are being told that the storm damage was not only felt on land, but across our coastline too.

The strong winds blowing over the surface of the ocean caused bigger and more powerful waves which washed up lost and discarded fishing nets and ghost gear from the oceans to our shorelines.

Cornish social enterprise Waterhaul collected over 300 kg of lost fishing gear (known as ‘ghost gear’) off Holywell Bay Beach within the space of a few days following the storms and have seen an increased amount washing up on other beaches throughout the county.

Harry Dennis, CEO & Founder Waterhaul commented: “We always see an increase in ghost gear from winter storms which washes it in from the Atlantic Ocean, but a series of back to back extreme storms appear to have been washing ghost gear in all across the North Cornwall coast.

"The nets and lines we found at Holywell bay had hundreds of fishing hooks attached to them which make them a huge threat not only to marine life, but also to surfers and other water users.”

Lost and discarded fishing gear makes up the majority of plastic pollution in our oceans with an estimated with an estimated 640,000 tons of so-called ‘ghost gear’ entering our oceans every year, according to Greenpeace.

It is also the most harmful form of plastic pollution, as the nets and gear continues in an endless cycle of catching and entangling marine life. At least 100,000 marine mammals are thought to be killed every year by ghost gear entanglement.

Waterhaul recover this ghost gear and recycle the plastic materials into new purposeful products such as litter picking equipment and sunglasses, giving new value to plastic waste.

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