Please help, I'm completely confused by insurance.
I have public liability insurance...goes without saying as I do garden maintenance.
The query I have if someone can help is I also am a very small sole trader garden designer along side the garden maintenance.
I have very few design projects a year and of no great value. I do not get involved in the build, do not project manage, do not do specifications. I may go along to plant up and thats about it.
The question is, should I have professional indemnity insurance? Companies will always say yes, but the cost is not far off what I make a year with design!
The next layer to my query is that I probably wouldn't bother with PI but I recently gained a good design job for a commercial project which now brings up my query. Again no project management etc etc
If that makes sense to anyone...please throw me some ideas
Thanks
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I would have said that if you make it completely clear in your T&Cs that your clients are hiring you at their own risk and you cannot be held liable for any consequential or actual losses that result from your work you would be OK.... But I am NOT a lawyer or specialist in the field.
Adam
Despite what you may state in your T&Cs that would not stop a company or individual going after you legally, if your design/advice lead to a loss or issue for them.
For starters, I would recommend you speak to a good insurance broker and the NFU Mutual are very good at understanding our industry. Worth getting a quote for professional indemnity from them and guidance on levels of cover in line your business risks. However, I understand if your advice for the stated small scale garden design is backed up by you doing all the work to fulfil the design, opposed to using sub-contractors, you may not need PI cover. Like I said, speak to the brokers who have the ear of the underwriters and can then sort you out! Good luck!
Hi,
we do garden maintenance and design. I approached a number of different companies last year about the pro indemity insurance.
Upshot most companies do not like designers to do any manual work, and it is a common exclusion.
Other companies will only insure you if you do lots of design, have loads of experience, etc
Ended up using a brokers, who amongst other industries specialise in Horticulture / Garden centres.
Our combined Public Liablity & Pro Indemity cost approx £320 last year, clearly the cost would vary considerably. We've got £5mil PLI & £100K Pro Indem.
We also found that almost no-one would entertain Pro indemity if we did Project Mangement.
The brokers are 'Alan & Thomas', we used the Poole office, though we are in North Yorkshire
http://alan-thomas.co.uk/ T.01202 754900
They are competent, courteous, consumate professionals
Thanks for all the advice. I also found that insurers would not put garden design and maintenance together. However I have gone to Simply Business, suggested on Landscape Juice, and they have sorted both PL and PI out for me through Maltings, under written by AXA. They could put 'flower arranging' with garden design but not maintenance! However they have reworded their default 'flower arranger' to garden maintenance ex tree feeling.
Bought and paid, I do hope its all correct, they did assure me it was. But hopefully will never have to find out!