As a self employed tradesman, you will need to purchase a number of different types of insurance policy. Firstly, you will require Public Liability Insurance to protect you for claims for negligence, made against you by members of the public including persons that you carry out work for. Working on other peoples premises or in their homes can unfortunately lead to accidents occurring, most electricians are both professional & careful but on some occasions property can be become damaged or in rare cases, persons are injured. In these eventualities, providing of course negligence can be proved against you, you will be expected to provide compensation to the person suffering the loss. Public Liability insurance will provide cover for this and subject to the insurers agreement will also pay costs to defend any action against you.
Most liability polices will come with an indemnity limit of between one and five million pounds. You can usually pick the sum insured you require yourself. Whilst lower sums insured are usually adequate for domestic work, higher sums insured are often required if you are working for public companies, offices, schools or any government body. Many larger contractor firms will require certain evidence of liability insurance and at a certain level before they will consider you for a job tender. When applying for your quotation, the insurers will require conformation of the type of electrical work carried out; usually the split is between commercial and domestic. As well as public liability insurance, if you have any employees, you will require employer’s liability insurance, to satisfy the requirements of the employers liability protection act. Insurance for electricians, is usually written on a per capita basis although, larger firms can be written on a turnover basis as this often provides a more favourable rating. As well as liabilities, cover can be made available for tools, this is usually provided on an all risk basis.
