Insurance By Trade

Employers' liability is the only business cover required by law, with motor insurance separately compulsory for any vehicle you use on the road, and it applies as soon as you become an employer, subject to limited exemptions, and labour-only subcontractors working under your direction commonly count for this purpose. Beyond that, public liability is what every contract asks for, starting at £1m with £5m or £10m where the contract requires it. Then it depends on the trade: contract works for the job while it is in progress, tools and plant, existing structures where you are working on somebody's building, and professional indemnity wherever you design or specify rather than just build.

It varies more by trade than by anything else. On our own book plumbing and heating starts at around £395 a year, electrical at £97 and cladding at £2,266. Those are starting figures from policies we actually arranged rather than illustrations. We do not publish a top figure, because the dearest policy we hold today is not a ceiling and a larger firm goes past it. Within any trade, turnover, wageroll, working height and claims history move the price far more than the trade name does.

Almost certainly yes. Labour-only subcontractors, who work under your direction and use your materials or plant, are commonly treated as employees by insurers and for the purposes of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act, and it is the working arrangement that decides it rather than whether they invoice you or are paid through CIS. Only a genuine bona fide subcontractor running their own business with their own cover sits outside it. Getting it wrong risks a fine of up to £2,500 for each day you were uninsured.

Because the claims are different. Roofing and plumbing both carry fire conditions but for different reasons, one from torches on timber and one from soldering in voids. Scaffolding is rated on height because a claim is rarely small. Cladding is rated on what the market has learned about external wall systems. Two contractors with identical turnover on the same site can sit in very different places, which is why a general trades scheme often fits neither of them well.

Usually yes, and for most contractors it should. The policy is written around what you actually do rather than a single label, so a firm doing first fix carpentry, some drylining and occasional tiling is described that way and rated on the mix. What matters is that the description is accurate and kept up to date. Cover attaches to the business as described, so taking on a new type of work, particularly a higher hazard one, without telling anybody is how a valid looking policy fails at claim stage.