BIG PROPERTY DATA LAUNCHES
UNIQUE £1M SOLUTION WITHIN ENVIRONMENTAL RISK REPORTS WITH AVIVA PLC
No-one
really knows the full history of every single piece of land in the UK.
When
contamination is found on commercially and domestically-used land that previously
came up as clear within environmental searches, it can have devastating
consequences, with clean-up bills often running into tens of thousands of
pounds.
To avoid
this unquantified property market risk, next-generation search provider Big
Property Data (BPD) has teamed up with Aviva PLC and Henderson Insurance
Brokers to offer a first-of-its kind insurance against such risk.
As of next
week, the new Contaminated Land Policy, provided through Aviva, will insure for
up to £1million, on any commercially and domestically-used land or property
which passes our environmental searches without risk of contamination being
found from our trusted databases. This cover will be automatically included
within our Environmental Risk Reports as standard, with no additional cost to
the purchaser. The policy covers not only the affected property, but
surrounding ones within a designated area as well, for up to 15 years.
Lorenzo
Tejada-Orrell, Founder and Co-Director of BPD, explained: “We have started to
see a trend around some high-cost contaminated land cases where we couldn’t see
from our data and all available records why the areas involved had been deemed
so.
“In these
cases, the land had been identified as contaminated after being previously
cleared in environmental searches. This raised the question ‘how can we protect
our customers from such risk?’ The benefit to solicitors is that they can
acquire cover to protect their client to the tune of £1m.”
Under Part
2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, contaminated land is defined as
‘any land which appears to the local authority in whose area it is situated to
be in such a condition, by reason of substances in, on or under the land, that
significant harm is being caused or there is the significant possibility of
such harm being caused...’.
If such an
issue arises and the original polluter can’t be found – bearing in mind this
could be a historic issue involving a single individual who is no longer
around, the current land or property owner is liable for the clean-up.
Lorenzo
explained: “No data doesn’t necessarily mean no risk. While industrial land
tends to be well documented, it’s almost impossible to know whether, at some
point in history, perhaps without the environmental understanding we have now,
someone has buried a substance in the ground which will one day surface as a
serious problem.
“So, we
wanted to give our customers the reassurance that they’re covered for all
eventualities such as this, in case something comes to light which leads a
local authority to condemn a piece of land retrospectively.”
This is just
the first of many innovative solutions Lorenzo and the BPD team are formulating
during 2018.
BPD is
currently working as an appointed representative of Henderson Insurance
Brokers, in providing insurance policies to its customers. These policies are
created and underwritten by Aviva.
Andrew Wakefield, Branch Director of Henderson Insurance Brokers
commented:
“We are delighted to be partnering with BPD, we see this as an incredibly
exciting and innovative opportunity with huge potential for future
developments, the team at BPD have been a pleasure to deal with and we are
looking forward to working closely with them”.