Larry Williams Drive

The thing we’d been warned about with climate change has now happened - AA Insurance has stopped offering new insurance policies for Westport because of the risk of flooding. At the very end of last year, AA Insurance wrote to the Buller District mayor advising that the company would be putting a - what they call temporary - stop to new insurance policies for properties in the 7825 postcode, which includes Westport, Carters Beach, and Cape Foulwind. If you listen to the experts, this is just the start. It’s already happening in flood‑risk towns in Australia, it’s now happened here, and it will keep happening until these towns find ways to keep themselves safe through measures like flood defences. You don’t need me to tell you what this is going to do to property prices. They’re only going in one direction - down. Not least because you need insurance to take out a mortgage. And you know what happens next, people start putting pressure on the Government to bail them out from dropping property values. They want