Mobile Hairdresser Insurance

Public liability for the ordinary accidents, a spilled bowl of colour on a client's carpet or a trip over your cable. Treatment liability for harm caused by the service itself, which is the one most people assume public liability covers and it does not. Cover for your kit, which lives in a car and is the claim you are most likely to make. Employers' liability if anyone works with you. Most policies can add product liability for anything you sell on, and personal accident for yourself, which matters when you are the business.

Usually the same day, and often within the hour. We need to know what treatments you offer, your estimated turnover, the value of your kit and whether anyone works with you. The thing that slows it down is a treatment list that turns out to be longer than the first conversation suggested, which is why it is worth listing everything up front rather than the main ones.

Yes, and the same policy shape fits. A mobile barber carries the same treatment liability exposure as in a shop, with a blade against skin, plus kit in the car and work in other people's homes and care homes. The only real difference is that there are no premises to insure. If you barber in a shop some days and mobile on others, the policy needs to describe both rather than one.

Yes, and buying the wrong one is a common mistake. A salon policy is built around premises: contents, stock, glass, business interruption if the shop closes. A mobile policy has no premises to insure and instead has to cover you at whatever address you are working at, plus your kit while it travels. If you work both mobile and from a salon, both need declaring, because neither policy automatically covers the other setting.

Only if the policy says so, and the conditions are where it gets caught. Cover for equipment in a vehicle very often requires forced entry to a locked car, and many policies exclude theft from a vehicle left overnight entirely, so kit left in the boot outside your house is frequently uninsured. Check whether overnight cover applies, what the single-item limit is, and whether an expensive item needs specifying.

Yes. Driving between clients for work is business use, and a social, domestic and pleasure policy does not cover it. It is usually a small addition to the premium and a serious problem if it is missing: an accident on the way to an appointment could leave you uninsured on the vehicle and facing a motoring offence, quite separately from your business cover.

That is exactly what a mobile policy is for. Public liability handles damage to their property and injury to people around the appointment; treatment liability is the part that responds to harm caused by the treatment itself, which public liability is not designed to answer. The claims we see most often are unremarkable (colour on a carpet, a spill on furniture, a burn from a straightener) which is why the treatment section matters as much as the headline figure.

Almost always. Care homes, hotels, wedding venues, agencies and any film or TV work will ask for a certificate showing public and treatment liability, typically at £1m, £2m or £5m, in your name and in date. Keep a copy on your phone. Being able to send it the same afternoon often decides who gets the booking, because the venue has its own compliance to satisfy.

We do not hold enough mobile policies to give you a figure that would mean anything, so we will not invent one. As context, freelance and mobile cover in this trade is widely advertised from around £45 to £60 a year for liability only, and adding kit cover and a fuller treatment list moves it up from there. Call 02382 000820 with your treatment list and kit value for a real number.