Shopfitters and Commercial Fit-Out Insurance

Around £200 a year is the realistic starting point for a small shopfitting firm. Our own book runs well above that, because our shopfitting clients are large fit out contractors working nights in trading centres, and those policies run into four figures. Both are true and they describe different businesses. What decides where you land is turnover, how much of the work is in occupied trading premises, whether you work nights, and your claims record. Ring 02382 000820.

It is the worst realistic outcome in fit out and it is a coverage problem as well as a fire one. Most policies make reinstatement a condition and some a condition precedent, which means a breach can defeat a fire claim entirely rather than reduce it. A unit full of materials with no detection overnight in an attached building is how a small ignition becomes a centre-wide loss. A signed sheet at the end of every shift is the only control that holds up.

Yes, and it is charged back regularly. Moving materials through a centre at night marks flooring, wall finishes and lifts, and centre management are well practised at pursuing it. Public liability answers for third party damage, but the unit you are working in and the landlord's fixtures within it may sit outside it. Photograph the route and the unit before you start.

Not under contract works, which pays for the physical damage and nothing else. If a fire or flood delays the opening and the contract attaches liquidated damages to the trading date, that needs delay in start up bought separately. On retail work where the date is advertised, that figure regularly exceeds the cost of the damage.

Yes, though it is a harder conversation and the first question will be about isolation procedure. What changes the reception is showing what you introduced afterwards: a permit system, a named person per shift, signed reinstatement, hot works stopping before site closes. Bring that detail and start the renewal early rather than in the last fortnight. 02382 000820.

In practice yes, because you cannot get on site without it. Shopfitters public liability insurance is not a legal requirement in itself, unlike employers' liability, but every shopping centre, landlord and main contractor makes it a condition of access and will ask for the certificate before you start. The limit is set by whoever owns the building rather than by you: £5 million is the practical floor on commercial fit out and £10 million is standard across centre and framework contracts. Quoting £1 million because it is cheapest is how a firm loses a contract it had already won.

They are opposite sides of the same counter. Shop fitters insurance covers you as the contractor fitting the premises out: your liability, your contract works, your tools and the damage you might do to the landlord's building. Shop insurance covers the retailer who trades there afterwards: their stock, their fixtures and their business interruption. If you fit shops out, you want this page. If you run one, you want our shop insurance.

A narrower market than general construction, because night working, fire alarm isolation and work inside occupied trading premises push shop fitting outside the appetite of a standard tradesman policy, and several of the insurers who do write it are reached through brokers rather than direct. Availability is not usually the problem. What separates placements is wording: how contract works is set, whether the landlord's existing structure is addressed, whether delay in start up is available for an advertised opening date, and what the policy demands of your hot works and isolation procedures.

Yes, but not on this page. Fitting kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms in domestic properties is a different risk from commercial fit out: you are in someone's home rather than a trading centre, the existing structure exposure is the house itself, and there is no landlord permit regime or advertised opening date. It has its own page, which is the one to read if that is your work.