A POSTCODE trap that unfairly costs many York, North and East Yorkshire householders high insurance premiums due to flooding risk is set to be swept away by new technology.

Insurance companies, including Norwich Union, are now beginning to use the new system, which already covers the whole of England.

The technology uses radar to accurately pinpoint the level of risk of flooding to individual buildings.

Under the current system, all householders in a particular postcode area pay extra on their premium under a blanket system for identifying homes at risk from flooding.

This means that in York, people whose homes were not even inundated during the record-breaking floods of November 2000 can still have to end up paying more on their insurance because of their postcode.

The new radar technology allows houses with lower risk to be taken off the flood premium list by pin-pointing specific risk for individual buildings.

It means that some people with postcodes which are in a flood risk area but whose individual homes are not at such a high risk, will get lower premiums.

Jill Bolton, from Norwich Union, said: "There will be some losers, that is true, but we actually expect there will be far more winners than losers."

The company has already looked at Shrewsbury, in the West Midlands.

Ms Bolton said: "Having looked at the map of Shrewsbury, there are 100 postcodes that will stop being referred. That is roughly 1,700 people.

The mapping system has been developed by a company called Internet Map Technologies.

Updated: 11:27 Wednesday, September 10, 2003