When providing a pub insurance quote, you will find that most companies ask you a set list of questions. They will then go away and approach 4 or 5 commercial insurance companies and get them to provide a quote.
What happens next is that the insurers provide a “quote”. Legally, this must be a combination of both a price, or annual premium, and details of the terms, conditions, excesses etc (the policy) that applies. Just getting a price is absolutely meaningless, you need to see the terms as well to see whether the price is worth paying.
Within these terms and conditions there are certain assumptions made. With pubs and licensed trade premises, any stock or business contents stored within a cellar can have quote onerous conditions applied to the cover. These can range from the exclusion of any damage caused by water (flooding or burst pipes) through to an increased excess for water damage.
You need to declare to your broker that you have a basement or cellar and ask them to get you a quote with the smallest excess for water damage, but only if you store stock or contents in the cellar. Most pubs keep their beers in the basement, even though the barrels are aluminium, if they get wet then Health and Safety will say that they cannot be used, so you need to have suitable insurance cover in place to replace ALL of your stock in the event of loss or damage.
Most policies will have a standard excess of £250 for every claim, depending on your flooding history at the pub, you should be able to get cover without this excess being increased.