Plumbers Insurance

Across the 40 plumbing and heating policies on our book, most fall between £386 and £1,448 a year, with the middle sitting around £750. We quote the range rather than the cheapest policy we have ever placed, because the very lowest is always an outlier and tells you nothing about your own business. These are premiums arranged for other firms, not a quote for yours.

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.

One failed joint in a house is a claim for a ceiling and a carpet. The same joint on the third floor of a converted block reaches two flats, the communal stairwell, somebody's contents, and often a hotel bill while the place dries out. The block's own insurer will come looking for the money afterwards.

That is why £2m stops being sensible the moment you work in flats. We would put £5m on almost any plumber doing occupied multi-storey work, and the difference in premium is usually smaller than one excess. If you are not sure which you are, the question to ask is simple: if the worst happens, how many front doors does the water reach?

Soldering counts as hot work, and your policy will say something about it. Typically that means clearing what will burn, keeping an extinguisher within reach, and staying on site for a period after the torch goes off to check nothing has caught. Fires that begin behind a bath panel or under floorboards are not obvious at the time. They announce themselves in the evening.

If you have switched to press fit, tell us. It removes the largest single fire exposure in the trade, it changes the conditions we can get attached, and it is one of the few things that reliably improves terms rather than just the price.

Unvented cylinders need the qualification. Gas needs registration. Neither is a formality: if a claim comes out of work you were not certificated to carry out, an insurer has a straightforward reason to decline it, and you will be arguing at the worst possible moment.

The same applies when you sub it out. Take a copy of their certificate and their liability schedule, and check the renewal date against the length of your job. If theirs has lapsed when the claim lands, in practice the loss becomes yours.

An escape of water claim on your record does not make you uninsurable, whatever the last renewal quote implied. It makes you a risk that needs explaining to somebody rather than pushing through a rating engine, which is a different problem and one a broker can actually solve.

What helps is detail. When it happened, what failed, and what you changed afterwards. A plumber who says they now pressure test and photograph every install before leaving site is a materially better proposition than the same plumber with the same claim and no answer. We put that in front of underwriters who read it rather than score it.

If you have been declined or your premium has doubled at renewal, ring us before you accept it. That conversation takes ten minutes and it is worth having.