Last November, my home town of Monmouth flooded. A month's worth of rain fell in a single day. Our high street, Monnow Street, turned into a raging river. Cars were swept away. A 102-year-old woman had to be rescued by raft in her nightdress. 

The gut wrenching horror of seeing my hometown destroyed, the shaky handheld disaster footage being shot by my own hand, not by someone in a far off country.  Months of stepping around piles of debris being pulled out of shops and homes, skips piled high with former goods and treasures, now ruined.  The empty shops and homes, boarded up, each one someone's life and occupation, now silent.

Nearly a year on, the water has gone but the damage hasn't. Some of my neighbours still can't go home. When local shop owners called their insurers, many were told to read the small print. Flooding was excluded. Local 'insured' businesses lost thousands and didn't get a penny back.

Now homes and businesses across our town are being priced out of insurance altogether, with huge excesses and blanket bans on whole postcodes.

Here's what makes it so hard to take. The same insurance industry walking away from towns like ours continues to insure the new coal, oil and gas projects that make floods more likely.  Insurers are fuelling the fire, while withdrawing support for those paying the price.

That's why I'm calling on the Government and financial regulators to:

1.  Stop insurers quietly abandoning flood-hit communities, ending hidden flood exclusions and blanket postcode bans.
2. Make insurers who back new fossil fuel projects pay more towards protecting the communities hit by floods.

Nobody should lose everything in a flood and then be left to cope alone. Please sign to stand with Monmouth, and every town that could be next.

Kim, Monmouth