Car insurance news

Postcode predicament for villagers wanting cheap car insurance

Inhabitants of three Welsh villages are campaigning for a postcode change in order to benefit from cheap car insurance.

The villages of Hendy, Fforest and Llanedi in Carmarthenshire have a Swansea postcode of SA4, which they believe gives insurers a false impression of their risk of car crime. The rural communities say that the actual level of crime in their area is very low and they should not be turned down for cheap car insurance on the basis of their postcode.

William James, a councillor in Carmarthenshire, commented, "We are not in Swansea but we have to pay the same rates. We don't want to be associated with a city where car crime is much higher. Carmarthenshire is a rural county and we should enjoy the benefits of a rural county."

The villagers believe that their postcode should be changed to SA14, which represents the town of Llanelli. This is closer than Swansea and a more accurate representation of their insurance risk, allowing insurers to give motorists in the villages a cheap car insurance deal to their liking.

Additional issues mean that this campaign isn't just about cheap car insurance. Cllr James said that the villages received the Swansea phone book instead of Carmarthenshire and post takes longer if it is correctly labelled Carmarthenshire.

However, the Royal Mail have doused the villager's hopes for low cost motor insurance in a letter saying that any changes would be unlikely, and adding, "Rather than providing an exact geographical description of the location of any given property, a postal address actually acts as a set of routing instructions."