Builders Insurance

Injury to other people and damage to their property arising from your work. A visitor hurt on site, a neighbour's car damaged by a dropped tool, a flood into the flat below from a pipe you disturbed. What builders liability insurance does not do is pay to redo work you got wrong, and it typically will not cover the client's existing building while you are working on it, because most wordings treat that as property in your care, custody and control. Both of those are the gaps worth closing before a job starts.

Public liability, at the limit your contracts require rather than the cheapest available. Employers' liability the moment anybody works under your direction, including labour only subcontractors, which is a legal requirement at a £5 million statutory minimum. Contract works for the job itself while it is in progress. Tools and plant. And an existing structures extension where you are working on a client's building. Insurance for builders sold as a package normally bundles the first four; the fifth is the one that gets missed.

Not meaningfully. Builders contractors insurance and commercial builders insurance are names used for the same set of sections, usually with larger limits and a higher contract works figure because the firms buying them are bigger. What changes as a builder grows is not the type of policy but the numbers on it: turnover, wageroll, maximum contract value and the limit of indemnity.

Cover starts at £88.97 a year for one director doing manual work. The spread above that is the trade: it runs from a sole trader doing kitchens to firms turning over millions, and turnover and wageroll drive nearly all of it, so there is no top figure worth printing. Ring 02382 000820 for a real number.

No law sets a minimum, but your contract will. £1m still appears on small domestic work, £2m is common, and £5m has become the practical floor for commercial jobs and most main contractor requirements, with £10m on larger and public sector work. Read the contract before buying, because raising a limit mid-term is easy and explaining a shortfall after a claim is not.

Almost certainly. A labour-only subcontractor working to your instructions with your materials or plant is commonly treated as an employee by insurers and for the purposes of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act, and it is the working arrangement that decides it rather than the invoicing. Only a genuine independent business with its own cover and its own control over the work sits outside it. The penalty for getting it wrong is up to £2,500 for each day you were uninsured.

Not as standard, and this catches out more builders than anything else. While you are working on the building it is commonly treated as being in your care, custody or control rather than third party property, which public liability wordings generally exclude. It needs an existing structures extension on your policy, or the owner's buildings insurance with your interest recorded. On a JCT contract the insurance option decides which, so settle it in writing before starting.

Your public liability normally covers subcontractors while they are working for you, so your business is protected against the claim itself. Insurers will usually then pursue the subcontractor's insurer. Where it hurts is if their cover has lapsed or their limit is lower than your contract required, because then you have absorbed a loss that should have been somebody else's and it sits on your record at renewal.

Yes, and it is a lot of what we do. The difficulty is that claims histories get read as numbers by online systems, so a few small tool thefts can price like something far more serious. We would rather put the explanation in front of an underwriter: what happened, whose work it was, and what you do differently now. Call 02382 000820 before accepting a renewal that has jumped.