Commercial Building Insurance
Commercial Building Insurance policies come with a wide range of insurance perils as standard. This standard range of perils is usually all you require to satisfy a mortgage lender. There are often extras which can be purchased and a broker or insurer can run through them with you.
Many modern insurance policy wordings will now include shop front or building glass as standard in their wording without you having to make any separate request for cover. Some other insurers simply say in the policy wording that the contract will cover everything that the landlord has a duty to repair or reinstate. Some policies will have a limit of say up to £5000 or others will make no reference to the limit at all. If you do have to include it as an optional extra, you will need to find out how much the glass in the building will cost you to replace.
To discover who is actually responsible for the glass in the building, commercial landlords will need to study the terms of the lease, whilst glass is considered to be part of the building it is usually the tenant that is responsible for its replacement in the case of breakage. This makes good sense, often the standard glass supplied by a landlord in a commercial property is not adequate for the tenants needs. Depending on the type of business often a more ornate form of glass is installed, perhaps including advertising or special forms of decorative lettering.
After studying the lease to ascertain who is responsible for the glass It’s a good idea to mention the insurance of the glass to your tenant, they will have to buy some form of commercial property insurance to cover their own business risks and its fairly easy to add glass on to this type of contract, most policies will have a section for it.
Of course if you are the owner occupier of the property you will need to ensure you have the glass covered on your own buildings insurance policy as a tenancy agreement will not usually be in force.
Buildings which involve residential letting will normally make the landlord responsible for the glass, as some insurers cover these risks under a commercial policy wording, its best to check you have the cover you need in place.
