Cockermouth UK flood restoration and recovery reveals national failures in contingency planning and inadequacy of resources

PRESS DISPENSARY - Thursday, Jan 07, 2010 - As snowfall grips Britain with a future promise of thaws and floods, disaster recovery specialist Claimtech is laying a damning charge of costly mistakes and incompetence after an investigation into the flood recovery being carried out in Cockermouth: the same mistakes and incompetence that have been recorded in flood restoration for the last 10 years.

"The shallow 'Lessons will be learnt', heard repeatedly from government and insurance officials, is as hollow today as it was 10 years ago," says Jeff Charlton of Claimtech.

"The residents of Cockermouth - in the wake of their recent flood event - are now faced with another catastrophe: the recovery phase," he continues. Despite a decade of 'learning' from major flood events, Cockermouth residents and businesses face the same recovery mistakes as previous communities, according to a recovery audit carried out by Claimtech. Planners fail to plan for recovery, only identifying defence as an option, with converging contractors offering scant resources and little knowledge or guidance.

"There is so much reliance on demolition. Demolition isn't the only answer for wet materials in floors, walls and ceilings," Charlton states. "The lessons always said to be learnt, simply haven't been. Incompetent actions abound as identified in 2007 by Sir Michael Pitt in his government report, suggesting the industry now urgently needs to get its act together."

As an international expert in flood and disaster restoration, Claimtech has no hesitation in stating that the UK must have the only restoration industry in the world that has no recognised qualifications, standards or protocols and allows unqualified contractors to destroy victims' property as they set about unfounded demolition. Salvage and restoration have been replaced with the more lucrative 'rip out and replace', on the grounds that drying out appears to be prohibitively costly.

"Time and again we see contractors entering a property and simply gutting it, then trying to dry it over months and even years with technology that doesn't work. This is typified by the homeowners of Hull living in caravans in their gardens for over a year."

Claimtech has now released its Cockermouth Audit, compiled from claims within 100 yards of each other in Cockermouth high street. "The deja vu results were as if we had gone back to the East Sussex floods affecting Lewes in 2000. The only protocol seems to be one of property destruction by

Demolition," says Charlton.

In the realisation that disaster restoration is something few victims have knowledge or experience in, Claimtech is providing a new "Flood Victim Support" information page online, full of international and independent links to free essential information on all aspects of flood recovery and health or safety issues. See www.claimtech.co.uk

Notes for editors

Claimtech is part of the www.999team.org which provides specialist assistance in all areas of disaster recovery, and natural disasters.

Jeff Charlton is a specialist in world wide disaster recovery and founding chairman of British Damage Management Association, BDMA, of which he is now a major critic.

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