Carpenters and Joiners Insurance
Ask a carpenter what they need insured and you usually get an answer about tools. Ask a joiner with a workshop the same question and the honest answer is a building full of machinery, a rack of timber, and the year of trading that disappears if any of it burns.
Those are two different policies and they get confused constantly. Tools cover is for the bag and the van. It is not, and never has been, cover for a spindle moulder.
If you do both, we would rather write both properly than have you find out the difference on a Sunday morning.
How Much Is Carpenters & Joiners Insurance?
Cover for a sole trader carpenter or joiner with up to £2m of public liability typically starts at about £6.08 a month, roughly £73 a year. That is the entry point rather than the average: one person, liability only, with nothing for tools, employees or the job itself. Employ anyone and employers' liability becomes a legal requirement, and from there the price is driven by wageroll and by the work you take on rather than by the trade.
What moves the price is the same in every trade: turnover, how many people work under your direction, the work you take on, and your claims record. We are a broker, so we take it to several insurers rather than quoting one. Call 02382 000820 for a realistic figure.
What Carpenters & Joiners Insurance Covers
Public Liability Insurance
Pays when your work injures somebody or damages property that is not yours, on site or in a customer's home. £2m for domestic, £5m for commercial and anything on a main contractor's site.
Employers' Liability Insurance
Legally required from the moment anybody works to your instructions, and included as standard. In a workshop it is machinery injuries that drive it; on site it is falls and lifting.
Workshop Property And Business Interruption
The premises, the machines, the timber and the work in progress, plus the income lost while none of it is available. The indemnity period is the part that matters and the part people get wrong.
Goods In Transit And Installation
Bespoke joinery between the workshop and the job, and while it is being carried in. A staircase is weeks of somebody's labour in a single awkward object.
Tools & Equipment Cover
Site tools and portable machinery, with the usual conditions about vehicles overnight. Read those before relying on them rather than after.
Why Wood Dust Makes A Workshop Fire Different
Dust settles everywhere, including inside extraction ducting, where a spark from a machine has a clear run through the building. Add racked timber and tins of finish and a joinery workshop burns fast and completely.
The insurance question is not really the building. It is how long you are out of production afterwards. Specialist woodworking machinery frequently runs to six months or more on lead time, and until it arrives you cannot make anything at all. We would push most joinery workshops to a twelve month indemnity period as a minimum, and twenty four where the kit is unusual.
Spraying, And The Conditions Attached To It
Solvent finishes bring fire and explosion risk into the building, and property policies usually respond with conditions: spraying inside a designated booth, adequate extraction, limits on how much finish is stored and how it is kept overnight.
Spray outside those conditions and there may be no cover at all. It is worth reading the wording rather than assuming, because a finishing fire usually takes the whole shop with it and the insurer will look closely at exactly this.
Where Fitting Becomes Designing
Hanging a staircase somebody else drew is workmanship. Working out the rise, the going and the headroom yourself is design, and it is governed by building regulations. A staircase that does not comply has to come out, and that is not a small job once it is in.
Same with altering a roof structure or a floor without an engineer's numbers. Public liability does not pay for a design being wrong, so if you do that kind of work regularly, professional indemnity is the cover that actually matches it.
Joiners Who Have Had A Workshop Fire
A fire on the record makes property cover harder to place and dearer, and the standard reaction to it is a large excess and a lot of questions about housekeeping.
Those questions are the opportunity. Extraction cleaned on a schedule, a proper spray booth, finishes in a metal cabinet, hot work kept out of the timber store. Every one of those is a concrete answer to the thing that worries an underwriter, and together they change the terms available.
If you are coming up to a renewal after a loss, ring 02382 000820 and let us build the submission rather than filling in a form.
What We Need To Quote
- Turnover, and how it splits between site work and workshop manufacture
- Whether you have a workshop, how it is built and what protection it has
- A list of machinery with values, and how extraction is managed
- Timber and finished goods stock values
- Whether you spray, and whether there is a booth
- Whether you do structural timber or design staircases
- Whether customers' goods are ever held at your premises
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this policy.
- Shopfitters and fit-outMost commercial joinery goes in under a fit out programme with its own conditions.
- Kitchen and bathroom installersFitted furniture brings the value of the goods themselves into the picture.
- Tradesman insuranceTools cover, and the conditions on theft from a van overnight.
- Contractors all riskCover for the job itself while it is in progress, before it is handed over.
Common questions
How much is carpenters insurance?+
A sole trader carpenter or joiner typically pays from about £6.08 a month, roughly £73 a year, for up to £2m of public liability alone. That is site work with no workshop behind it. Once there is a workshop the picture changes completely, because you are then insuring a building, machinery, timber stock and the income you lose while you cannot produce, and that is a different order of premium. Call 02382 000820 and we will price what you actually run.
Is my workshop machinery covered by my tools policy?+
No, and it is an expensive assumption. Tools cover is for portable equipment you take to site and carry in the van. Fixed machinery, extraction plant and stock belong on a property policy for the premises. A joiner relying on a few thousand pounds of tools cover for a workshop full of machines has almost nothing behind them, and usually finds out after a fire.
How long should my business interruption period be?+
Longer than most people choose. The building might be back in months, but specialist woodworking machinery often takes six months or more to arrive and you cannot produce until it does. Twelve months is usually the sensible minimum and twenty four is reasonable where the machinery is unusual or was bought second hand.
Am I covered for a staircase damaged in transit?+
Only if you hold goods in transit cover, and it is worth having in this trade. Public liability will not touch it because the staircase is yours or in your charge rather than third party property. The real loss is not the timber either, it is the weeks of workshop labour that have to be repeated while the customer's programme slips.
Do carpenters need professional indemnity insurance?+
It depends whether you design. Fitting to somebody else's drawing is workmanship. Working out a staircase yourself is design, and it is subject to building regulations, so a non-compliant one comes out at your cost. The same goes for altering roof structures or floors without an engineer. Public liability does not pay for a design being wrong; professional indemnity does.
Other trades we cover
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