What is Public Liability Insurance?

Public liability insurance is there to protect your business from being sued by a customer or client as a result of an accident which occurs. At TechRound, we can put you in touch with a number of brilliant policy providers. Just get in touch with us at [email protected]

You can get policies which can be tailored to suit the needs of your business so that you are protected against action from your customers.

Public Liability Insurance Explained

Public liability insurance provides cover for you if you have a customer, client or patient who becomes ill or injured as a result of your work or it happens on your premises. It also will cover you if you accidentally damage someone else’s property whilst you are carrying out your role.

The idea for this type of cover is the business owner or professional has the responsibility of offering a ‘duty of care’ to their customers. Therefore, if there is any damage as a result of them carrying out their business as normal, the customer will have the right to sue. The legal costs will be covered by public liability insurance.

Those individuals who require this duty of care include:

Invitees: this refers to the customers that you will invite into your store or shop.
Licensees: this will be the contractors which work on different premises to carry out the job.
Trespassers: those that enter your property when you did not give them permission to do so.

It is pretty much inevitable that accidents will happen in the workplace, no matter how big or small. Therefore, you policy should cover things like:

• Medical Bills
• Repairs
• Business Disruption
• Compensation
• Loss of Income

To give you a feel for a typical scenario, you might have a customer who comes into your store and accidentally trips on something and ends up injuring themselves on your premises. Or maybe your profession requires you to visit other people’s properties, such as a plumber or a builder, and you manage to accidentally damage your customer’s property while you are working on the job.

The loss of income and business disruption refers to any income which is lost by the business from being involved in legal proceedings or by having to repair anything on the workplace premises. The loss of income can also refer any compensation to the victim that may find they are unable to attend work temporarily due to injury they have.

How much does Public Liability insurance cost?

Both small and medium businesses can get cover from £1 million all the way up to £10 million. It is fairly common that working with local authorities or the public sector requires you to have a minimum cover of £5 million. When you go to get a quote, policy advisors will take into consideration the size of your enterprise and the specific risks to the customer and the general public.

If it is the case that you work from home and have a small operation. You may only require a low level of cover. However, if you do own a customer-focused business such a shop or a restaurant and therefore have a lot of customers on a daily basis, you may find that you will require a higher level of cover.

Companies are more likely to pay a larger amount of their policy where there are risks to the customer. This could be because of heavy machinery or potentially dangerous materials, for example, at a dentist, hair salon, beautician.

How do I know if I need Public Liability insurance for my company?

It is recommended that all businesses have some sort of public liability insurance if they do have times where they will be coming into contact with the general public. Although not compulsory for private sectors, it can actually be more expensive not to have this type of insurance in place. If a client or customer comes forward saying they want to file a claim against you, it will actually cost a significant amount more in legal fees and compensation to resolve the case. It will be the case that the longer the proceedings take, the more time you have to take time off from work and lose income in the process.

Therefore, having public liability insurance in place will help to give that sense of peace of mind that if an accident were to ever occur and an injury was to happen to a member of the public.

There are various options for providers of public liability insurance with many different providers. For public liability insurance from ConstructaQuote and other providers, please get in touch.