Building Control and Approved Inspector Insurance

In building control, professional indemnity is bought and sold on one question: what the policy says about fire.

The market's response to the building safety failures of the past decade has been to restrict fire related cover, and the restrictions take several forms. An outright exclusion of claims arising from fire safety or compliance. An exclusion of cladding and external wall systems. A sub-limit far below the main limit. A carve-out of residential buildings over a certain height. An aggregate limit shared across all fire claims rather than each and every. Any of them can appear on a policy that looks adequate on its headline figure.

So the only safe approach is to read the fire position before anything else and to understand it precisely. Which buildings are excluded, whether the restriction applies to work already done as well as new work, whether it is an exclusion or a sub-limit, and whether the limit is aggregate. A practice that signs off residential buildings and holds a policy excluding fire safety claims is uninsured for the thing most likely to happen to it, however good the premium looks.

The timing of claims in this discipline makes continuity of cover more important than price in any single year.

A completion certificate is relied on when the building changes hands, when a lender values it, when an owner tries to insure it, or when a defect appears. That can be five, ten or more years after sign-off, and recent changes to the limitation position for building safety claims have extended how far back some claims can reach. Professional indemnity responds to the policy in force when the claim is made rather than when the work was done, which has two consequences people underestimate.

First, a year without cover permanently exposes everything certified in it, because there will be no policy to answer a claim made later. Second, retiring or closing a practice without run-off cover leaves the principals personally exposed for work done decades earlier. Both are the same mechanism, and in a discipline where the claim arrives this late they matter more than in any other profession we insure. Keep the cover continuous, keep the retroactive date intact at every renewal, and treat run-off as part of any exit plan rather than an afterthought.

Building control inspection is sampling, not supervision, and the defence of a claim depends on demonstrating that distinction with records.

An inspector attends at stages and sees what is open when they arrive. Foundations get poured, cavities get closed, service penetrations get boarded, and fire stopping disappears behind plasterboard between visits. If a defect is later found in work that was never visible to you, the question is whether your inspection regime was reasonable and whether you did what a competent inspector would have done with the access available.

That is answered by records rather than by argument. Dated inspection records saying what was inspected, what was found and what was not accessible. Notices and requests for work to be opened up or held for inspection. Photographs at each stage. Written confirmation where you accepted a specialist's certificate or a competent person notification instead of inspecting yourself, with the reason. A practice whose file shows a disciplined regime and a specific reason for each acceptance defends a hidden defect claim. One whose file shows three visits and a certificate does not.

Underwriters approaching this sector are cautious, and the way a practice presents itself matters more here than in most placements.

The questions that come up are about competence and control: registration status of inspectors, the classes of building and work the practice takes on, whether high risk residential work is accepted, how plan checking is resourced against inspection, what peer review or second opinion exists on complex fire strategies, and what the practice declines. A practice that can state clearly what it does not take on reads as controlled. One that takes anything reads as unselective, which in this discipline is the underwriting concern.

Historic work matters equally. Expect questions about what was signed off in previous years, particularly residential buildings over the relevant height, cladding and external wall systems, and whether any have been the subject of a remediation programme or a notification. Answering those fully is in your interest, because non-disclosure on exactly the point an insurer is worried about is how cover gets avoided at the moment it is needed.

One clause decides this placement and it is not the limit. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.