Public Liability Insurance is a type of insurance that although not required by law
is becoming something that more and more tradesman are having to get before they are allowed to undertake any work on a property because more and more people are getting concerned about being held liable should something go wrong.
The main thing that this type of insurance is used to cover is if during the course of the work that you are undertaking you are to cause any third party injury or any third party property damage. Many people are under the impression that this will cover you for being held liable for any work you do that isnt up to scratch but this is not the case as that would be classed as bad workmanship and therefore Public Liability Insurance would not cover for this, and it also would not cover for any case of personal injury to the policyholder.
Many bricklayers may be wondering what it is exactly that they would be covered for with this type of insurance so I will provide a couple of examples, firstly if you were walking through the property with your materials and you were to knock over an expensive ornament then you would be held liable for its repair or replacement and secondly if you were to accidentally drop a brick and damage the persons driveway that you were working on then you would again be held liable for the repair.
The price for the basic one million pounds worth of cover for a year is generally about fifty pounds from some insurers but there are certain people will want you to have more than the basic cover before you work for them. The prices obviously increase as the level of cover that you have gets higher and you can get two million pounds worth of cover and five million pounds worth of cover although that is rather rare as it is not often that you would be able to create more than two million pounds worth of damage that you would be held liable for.
Almost every company out there today see this insurance as something that is critical before they will hire anyone to do a job for them which when you consider the price of the insurance against the damage that could theoretically be done you can see why its a must have for all tradesman.