Hitchin Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We highlight many of these businesses, organisations and individuals regularly in a feature called 'Up Close in Hitchin' as well as fascinating opinion pieces from our trusted cohort of Nub News contributors.

For today's opinion piece here's popular Hitchin town centre boss Tom Hardy on business interruption claims

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As you may have seen, a recent high court ruling means that hundreds of thousands of small businesses will now be eligible to claim after being forced to close during the Covid crisis.

Following a high court judgement in test cases brought forward by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) the ruling means a large number of businesses will now be claiming.

If you have business interruption insurance and have been turned down, please make contact with your insurer as soon as possible. About 370,000 businesses are affected by the judgement and it had previously estimated the value of policies affected by the test case at about £1.2bn.

Many insurers had declined to pay-out, arguing that the business interruption policies were not designed to cover a government-imposed lockdown. This prompted the FCA to launch a test case in the courts to provide clarity on business interruption policy clauses, based on a sample of 21 policies from eight insurers.

This is one of the most significant insurance court cases in years and the high court found in favour of the arguments advanced for policyholders by the FCA on the majority of key issues.

Given the number of claims that will no be eligible, the waiting time may be long, so, if you have business insurance that includes 'interruption' please claim as soon as possible.

If you need any advice on claiming or more information on how this high court outcome may affect your business please get in touch by emailing me, [email protected]

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