A joiner usually works in two places with different risks. The workshop holds machinery, dust and stock and is a fire and an employers' liability question. The site is somebody else's finished house, where the claims are damage to what is already there and to the item being fitted. A policy written for one of those two rarely reaches the other, and most joiners need both.
The workshop: machinery, dust and fire
Saws, planers, thicknessers and sanders are work equipment subject to duties about suitability, guarding, maintenance and training, and wood dust is a recognised respiratory hazard with a long claims tail. The workshop is also a fire risk: dust extraction, finishing products and waste make it one of the higher hazard small premises an insurer writes. Contents, stock, machinery and business interruption all attach there.
The site: other people's finished rooms
Fitting kitchens, staircases, doors and floors happens in completed houses, and the claims are damage to decoration, flooring and existing fittings. General public liability commonly excludes property in your care, custody or control, which can reach the item you are installing, so the treatment or custody extension and its lower limit matter as much as the headline figure.
The fitted item, and workmanship
A staircase that does not comply, a kitchen fitted to a wrong measurement or a floor that lifts is a workmanship question rather than a liability one: public liability answers for damage the work causes, not for the cost of redoing the work. Where a joiner designs or specifies, professional indemnity is worth asking about, because a design that does not comply is a financial loss to the client.
Tools, the van and the stock in transit
Joinery tools are valuable and portable, and finished units in transit between workshop and site are stock rather than tools. Goods in transit or a stock extension answers for a kitchen damaged on the way; the tools section, with its conditions about locked vans and overnight parking, answers for the tools. They are different sections and both need checking.
Questions people ask about joiners insurance
What insurance does a joiner need?
Public liability at the limit sites require, employers' liability once anybody is employed, contents and machinery for the workshop, stock and goods in transit for finished units, tools cover, and business interruption for the workshop.
Is damage to a customer's floor covered?
Where you are liable, and subject to any exclusion for property in your care, custody or control, which for a fitting joiner can reach the room and the item being installed. Check the extension and its inner limit.
Does the policy cover a badly fitted kitchen?
Public liability answers for damage the work causes, not for the cost of redoing the work itself. That is a workmanship question, and design or specification failures belong to professional indemnity.
Is the workshop rated separately from site work?
In effect yes: machinery, dust and finishing products make a workshop a higher hazard premises than site fitting, and insurers ask about extraction, waste and how finishing is done.