Being on the Gas Safe Register is a legal requirement to work on gas, and it is not insurance. The register says you are competent to do the work; it says nothing about who pays when a flue was signed off wrongly or a boiler installation floods a flat below. Those are two separate obligations and gas engineers need both.
Why gas work is underwritten differently
Public liability for a gas engineer is rated with the consequences in view. The realistic worst case is not a trip hazard but carbon monoxide exposure, a fire or an explosion, and a claim of that kind can arrive years after the work was done and can involve serious injury. Insurers respond by pricing the trade higher than general plumbing, by asking for the registration number, and by writing conditions that require the work to be carried out by appropriately registered persons. That last condition matters if you ever have somebody else's hands on a job.
The covers a gas engineer needs by name
Public liability for injury and third party damage, employers' liability once anybody is employed, tools and equipment for what is in the van, and, for many engineers, professional indemnity. The last is the one most often missed: issuing a certificate, specifying or designing a system, or advising on a heating installation are professional acts, and a claim that the advice or the certificate was wrong is not a public liability claim. Engineers doing landlord safety checks in volume are particularly exposed to it.
Water, not gas, is the frequent claim
Gas is what makes the policy expensive; water is what makes the claims. Heating work means open systems, drained pipework, soldered joints and pressurised installations inside other people's buildings, and escape of water through a ceiling into the property below is the routine loss. As with other trades working inside premises, damage to the part of the property being worked on can fall into the care, custody and control exclusion, so check whether that has been written back.
Hot works and the conditions attached to them
Soldering, brazing and any use of a blowtorch is hot work, and almost every trade policy carries a condition about it: clearing combustible material, having an extinguisher to hand, and continuing a fire watch for a stated time after finishing. Policies do sometimes exclude hot works entirely on cheaper schemes. For a heating engineer that is not a theoretical restriction, it is most of the working day, so it needs checking rather than assuming.
Questions people ask about gas engineer insurance
Does Gas Safe registration include insurance?
No. Registration is a competence and legal requirement to work on gas appliances; it is not a policy and it pays nothing. Insurance is bought separately, and insurers will usually ask for the registration number as a condition of cover.
Is public liability insurance a legal requirement for gas engineers?
Not by statute. In practice it is required by housebuilders, letting agents, commercial clients and most work sourced through agencies, and employers' liability is legally compulsory as soon as you employ anybody.
Do I need professional indemnity for landlord gas safety checks?
It is worth carrying. Issuing a safety record is a professional act, and an allegation that a check was carried out or recorded incorrectly is a claim about your work rather than about accidental damage, which is what professional indemnity answers.
Are my tools covered if the van is broken into?
Only under a tools section, and usually subject to conditions about overnight parking and whether tools are left in the vehicle. Those conditions are typically stricter than owners expect and are where van theft claims are decided.