Public Liability Insurance
This type of insurance will protect you against your legal liability where you accidentally cause damage or loss to someone else’s property, for example, knocking a laptop off a desk or spilling coffee over a computer. Even more serious, this type of policy will cover you against claims of personal injury should your actions cause another to suffer, for example, if you leave your case in a place where someone trips over it and injures himself or herself.
Many agencies insist that this type of insurance is in place before allowing you onto their client’s site and this obligation is often included within the terms and conditions of your contract with them. It is therefore imperative that you cover this risk by insurance if you have accepted the responsibility to do so in writing. Even if you have not, this class of insurance is both sensible to have and relatively inexpensive when compared to the potential risks, especially as this is usually very inexpensive and bundled together with Employers Liability Insurance.
Employers Liability Insurance
This insurance is arranged to protect employers against claims for injury or illness caused through work related activities brought by their employees.
Naturally, in most typical Personal Service Companies, the only employee is also the owner of the company and in theory an individual cannot take legal action against oneself.
For this reason, many contractors ignore this class of insurance. However, the Employers Liability Compulsory Insurance Act 1998 requires all employers to maintain cover on behalf of their employees for a minimum of £5,000,000 in respect of such claims, and makes no distinction between one person and multiple employee companies. As this class of insurance is very inexpensive and almost always bundled along with Public Liability Insurance, it is not worth taking the risk to ignore this legal obligation.
As an Accountancy Service client JSA is able to extend our existing Policy to include your Company at no additional cost.