Lift Installation, Service and Repair Insurance

Installing a new lift is the controlled part of this trade. The uncontrolled part is agreeing to look after one that was installed before you existed.

A maintenance contract makes you the party responsible for keeping a machine safe, and you take it on without knowing what previous engineers did, what parts were substituted, whether obsolete components are still in service or whether recommendations were ignored for years. From the day you sign, a failure is examined against what you should have found, not against who caused it.

Which makes the takeover survey the most valuable document in the business. A written condition report at the start of every new contract, listing defects found, obsolete equipment, missing documentation and work recommended, with the client's written response, is what separates an inherited defect from your negligence. Where a client declines recommended work, the record of the recommendation and the refusal is the defence, and it needs renewing rather than filing once.

Thorough examination under LOLER is where a lift business's liability becomes professional rather than physical, and most policies in the trade do not reflect it.

A thorough examination report is relied on by the building owner, the managing agent and frequently their insurer as evidence the lift is safe to use. If the report says the lift is satisfactory and a defect that should have been identified then causes an injury or a major failure, the claim is that the examination was inadequate. That is an advisory failure, and public liability answers injury you caused rather than an opinion that was wrong.

So two things follow. Professional indemnity is not optional for a business providing examinations, however unlikely a claim feels. And the examination record needs to be substantive: what was tested, what was measured, what was not accessible and why, and what was recommended with a timescale. A report that says satisfactory with no detail is impossible to defend, because there is nothing in it showing what was actually examined.

Every lift business deals with entrapments constantly, and that familiarity is exactly why they produce serious claims.

Most entrapments end with a passenger released uneventfully within the hour. The serious ones are the exceptions: somebody who panicked and forced the doors, climbed out through a partly open door and fell down the shaft, or a vulnerable passenger left for hours because the alarm was not monitored or the response never came. In each, the central question is how long it took and what the contract promised.

Which puts response time inside the insurance question rather than beside it. A contract promising a one hour release attendance that in practice takes four is a breach and the injury is foreseeable. Working alarms with monitoring that is actually answered, a release procedure your engineers have practised on that model of lift, and an honest callout commitment matched to your coverage are the controls. Promising a response you cannot deliver to win a contract is the single worst decision available in this trade.

Passenger claims attract attention, but employers' liability is where the severe injuries in this trade actually occur.

An engineer works on a car top, in a pit beneath a car, inside a shaft with a moving machine, and in a motor room with live controls. The hazards are falling down the shaft, being struck by a falling tool or component, being trapped by a car that moved, and electrical contact. The protection is isolation and lock-off done properly every time rather than when convenient, because the fatal accidents in this work almost always involve a lift that moved when somebody believed it could not.

Expect an underwriter to ask about it in those terms: your isolation and permit procedure, whether engineers ever work alone in a shaft, car top and pit working arrangements, and your rescue arrangement if an engineer is injured in a shaft where nobody can reach them. Older buildings add asbestos in shafts, motor rooms and brake linings, so the pre-2000 survey position matters here as much as in refurbishment work.

The gap in most lift placements is professional indemnity for examinations. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.