“It was heart-wrenching,” says Andrea Sholl, recalling the Friday night last month when flood waters started rising inside Bar 125, the restaurant she and her husband, Martin, own in the Welsh border town of Monmouth.
The Sholls and a couple of colleagues were still clearing up after a busy evening serving diners when the building started to fill with water at about 1am.
They were able to carry some furniture upstairs to protect it, but lost all of their appliances including dishwashers and freezers, as well as fridges full of thousands of pounds’ worth of food.
“It was like a huge fountain coming up through the drains. It went through the cellar, then through into the kitchen, then the higher kitchen, and then before we knew it, in the lower dining room it was up to about here,” Andrea Sholl says, pointing to the windowsill.
Bar 125 – located next to the River Monnow in the shadow of Monmouth’s ancient bridge, dating from about 1270 – had only been trading for eight days when the heavy rains of Storm Claudia hit.
The Monnow burst its banks, sending water surging into the town centre, resulting in the most severe flooding in decades.
Located between the Monnow and the larger River Wye, Monmouth has flooded in the past but many local people describe the recent inundation as the worst since the 1970s.
Nearly 200 homes and about 120 businesses suffered significant flooding, according to Monmouthshire county council, while the nearby village of Skenfrith was flooded for the fourth time in five years. After the water was pumped away, the streets and many premises were full of mud and debris.
The majority of businesses in Monmouth town centre are independents. The flood came right at the start of the crucial Christmas trading period, when many traders need to earn enough to get them through the lean months of January and February.
The Sholls, who own another bar in nearby Usk, considered this year’s festive season especially important, as they had just completed two months refurbishing an empty pub. The couple were forced to cancel more than 1,200 bookings for Christmas parties and lunches. With the help of tradespeople and local residents mucking in, they raced to clean up and restock, managing to reopen just 10 days later.
“We needed to get those tills ringing as soon as we could,” says Andrea Sholl.
This fact was brought home to the couple when they discovered their insurance, bought through a broker, did not cover them for flood damage or lost trade.
On the Guardian’s visit about a month after the floods hit, it is clear many of the independent retailers and hospitality businesses that populate the high street have not managed to resume trading.
The town’s Waitrose supermarket has just reopened, as well as the Marks & Spencer grocery store, along with several coffee shops and retailers, while the lingerie shop Harts of Monmouth is only open on the first floor of its building.
Waitrose’s restart has been welcomed with enthusiasm by local residents Gail and Carl, who are chatting in the car park. “You realise how important it is to the town commercially and socially. Older people have somewhere to go again to speak to people,” says Carl. “But I walk past the little shops and wonder if they are going to come back?”
Workers in hi-vis remain a common sight on Monnow Street, the main shopping street. Many are still dealing with water damage. The walls of several premises are being replastered and there is an audible hum of power tools and dehumidifiers.
Several businesses on the high street have notes pinned to their front doors, explaining when they hope to reopen.
Roberto Biba, whose wife owns the restaurant La Piccola Italia, is watching workers carry wood out of the venue. “We are on our own,” he says. “We have had to pay a month’s wages from our own pocket and a full month’s rent.”
Biba is not yet sure what will be covered by the company’s insurance and does not believe the restaurant will reopen until late January or early February.
Tom Innes, the owner of the wine merchant Fingal-Rock, is back trading, but is still sorting through his stock. All of his wine bottles survived, but the muddy residue left behind tells the tale of the cardboard boxes that began to disintegrate in the water.
“Christmas half kills me every year, and I’ve got all this on top,” he says with a smile.
Unlike Bar 125, Innes’s insurance will cover the damage and he has already been able to buy some replacement metal shelving and repair the back door.
After nearly 40 years in the town, and despite being “marooned” in his upstairs flat during the flood, he considers it a “one-off”, but adds: “I’m sure [insurance] premiums will go up in future.”
Clearing up and preparing to restart trading are more challenging for small businesses, says Nick Collins, the chief executive of the hospitality group Loungers, which has more than 300 venues across the country including Monmouth’s Estero Lounge.
“We are quite fortunate that we are a big business and have teams that are normally building new sites that we were able to divert to the clear-up job,” he says. Estero Lounge reopened on 4 December, and Collins estimates the flood cost “in the low hundreds of thousands”, a figure that should mostly be covered by its insurance.
Monmouthshire council and the Welsh government agreed to provide extra financial support of up to £1,000 to affected residents and up to £3,000 to businesses. The local authority has suspended council tax and business rates, while laminated signs stuck to parking machines in council car parks inform drivers that parking charges have been paused.
Paul Matthews, the chief executive of the council, acknowledges the financial support is a drop in the ocean for some traders.
“No matter how hard you try, these sums do not get close to covering the full cost to impacted residents or businesses whether insured or not,” he says. “It is not easy or affordable for many living in challenged areas to secure insurance at all.”
Many local residents and businesses are now fearful about what the rest of the winter will bring, adds Matthews: “It takes months to recover from a serious flood. The anxiety it leaves behind never disappears. Every time it rains, people are concerned.”
Severe flooding is expected to occur more frequently across the country as a result of the climate crisis. Towns such as Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire that have flooded frequently in recent years are at risk of becoming uninsurable, with many shop owners no longer able to afford insurance.
Homeowners at risk of flooding are able to take advantage of the Flood Re reinsurance scheme, an initiative between government and insurers, which pools risk to make insurance cover more affordable. However, the scheme does not cover businesses.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says expanding Flood Re insurance to cover commercial properties “would require an additional significant levy, which would raise costs for small businesses and consumers”.
The government is investing at least £10.5bn across England “to better protect businesses and homes, nearly 900,000 properties, from the impacts of flooding”, a spokesperson adds.
