Liability Questions
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Public liability insurance provides cover should you cause bodily injury to third parties or material damage to a third party's property. It does not normally cover defective workmanship.
Bodily injury is where you cause someone physical harm, for example, you drop a heavy item on someone's foot and injure them.
This is damage caused to someone's physical belongings, for example, a builder drops a tile off a roof onto someone's car and damages it.
A third party is someone not directly related to you or your company. In most cases, your customer is a third party.
It is generally assumed that you are properly qualified and experienced in your particular trade. Therefore, the majority of insurance companies do exclude defective workmanship (efficacy), however are able to include efficacy for certain trades.
In the example of a motor trader, this covers any damage caused to the vehicle being worked on, which their public liability insurance would not cover. Their public liability insurance protects them if a customer comes onto their premises and perhaps falls over some tools left lying around and hurts themselves.
As public liability does not cover the "item" (or customer) you are working on, if you are a hairdresser, beautician, tattooist/bodyartist or other related trade, you will need cover for the treatments you apply. Treatment risk provides cover in case you cause injury to a person you apply a treatment to.
If you employ anyone, or you are a limited company, it is a legal requirement to have employers' liability insurance to provide cover should an employee be injured or hurt in the course of carrying out their work.
The only exceptions to this are if you only employ close, direct relatives, such as a brother / sister / son / daughter / father / mother or you have a limited company and you are the only director, with no other employees. Employers' liability is only available as an add-on to an existing public liability insurance.
If, as part of your business, you supply and/or fit a part, you will need product liability cover should bodily injury or property damage occur as a result of the product being faulty. Even if you did not actually manufacture the part yourself, but just supplied it, there are some circumstances where a customer can make a claim against you. Product liability cover is usually, but not always, incorporated into a public liability insurance policy.
Professional Indemnity insurance is similar to public liability insurance, but covers liability arising from losses due to advice given or design work. Professional trades such as doctors, design consultants, and legal or financial services, advise people on all sorts of aspects of life and business, and the wrong advice can sometimes cause losses which are not necessarily physical. These can range from loss of reputation or financial losses, to the failure of a critically designed component to perform properly, such as an alarm or safety system.
No. We do not cover public or employers' liability for market traders. We suggest you contact the National Market Traders Federation who provide liability cover as part of their membership benefits.