Construction Company Insurance

The core is employers liability and public liability. Most contractors add contract works for the job itself, plant and tools, and business interruption for their own premises. Design and build firms add professional indemnity. Vans, tippers and lorries sit on a separate motor or fleet policy.

Only partly. Employers liability is compulsory at £5m once you employ anyone, with narrow exemptions, the practical one being a limited company whose only employee owns half or more of the shares. Motor cover is required for vehicles on the road. Public liability is not required by UK law at all: it is main contractors, frameworks and commercial clients who insist on it.

Enough to satisfy the contracts you work under, which usually means more than you would choose for yourself. Main contractors and public sector frameworks commonly set a minimum before you can start on site, so check the subcontract or framework terms before you buy rather than afterwards. Employers liability is the exception: the law sets that at £5m, though the Health and Safety Executive notes that policies are commonly issued at £10m.

It depends which kind. Labour-only subcontractors work under your direction and are usually treated by the policy as your employees, so they sit on your employers liability and in your wageroll. Bona fide subcontractors are independent firms carrying their own cover, declared by number and annual payment.

Where the policy says so, yes, and it is a condition rather than good practice. Many wordings require you to obtain and keep written evidence that bona fide subcontractors hold their own public liability to a stated minimum, and to produce it when a claim arises. A missing certificate becomes your problem.

Where the mistake was honest, usually a proportionate reduction rather than a refusal: pay eighty per cent of the premium you owed and an insurer may pay eighty per cent of the claim. Understating the figures deliberately is a different matter and can cost you the policy altogether. They are estimates that get adjusted anyway, so there is nothing to gain.

No. Rebuilding the wall you built badly is your cost to carry. What the policy normally does cover is the damage that defective work causes to the rest of the job or to other property, which is usually the far bigger number. Read your own exclusion, because wordings differ.

Yes, wherever a contract puts the design on your side of the line. The liability sections were built around physical harm, so they engage when something breaks or someone is hurt. A specification that was simply the wrong answer breaks nothing, yet still costs the client the price of putting it right, and only the design section reaches that cost.

Yes, and it is worth checking what you actually hold. Cover for fire safety and cladding related work has been heavily restricted across the UK market in recent years, and many policies now carry limits, higher excesses or exclusions that did not exist before. Do not assume your renewal is like for like.

Terms making cover conditional on specified fire precautions whenever heat is applied on site, which commonly includes grinding and cutting as well as flame. They typically cover clearing combustibles, having extinguishers to hand and keeping a watch after the work. Not following them is a common reason a fire claim is argued about.

If you are building something that could be damaged before handover, yes. Contract works covers the job itself and materials on site while the work is under way. Who is required to arrange it depends on the contract, so read the insurance section before assuming the duty falls on you.

Not as standard. Cover applies to the works you are carrying out, and the structure that was already there is excluded unless it is added. On refurbishment and fit-out that is an important gap, and who arranges it usually depends on which insurance option the contract uses.

Yes. There has been no legal duty to retain expired certificates for many years, but in construction it matters more than most sectors. Dust, noise and vibration claims surface decades after the exposure, and the policy that answers is the one on risk when the work was done.

A fine of up to £2,500 for any day on which you are without suitable cover, and up to £1,000 for failing to display the certificate or produce it to an inspector. Note that it is per day, not per employee per day, which is a widely repeated error.

We deliberately quote no figure, because we could find nothing reliable to quote: no independent UK body gathers construction premiums, and the averages in circulation are individual brokers describing their own small-account books. Your own number turns on turnover and its mix, payroll, subcontractor spend, working height and depth, design exposure and your loss record.