Electricians insurance, and the limits UK sites demand

What insurers print for this trade

Buying cover as an electrician

1. Buy the limit the sites you work on demand. Domestic work is normally written at £1m or £2m of public liability, while main contractors, housing associations and local authorities commonly specify £5m and will check the certificate before you go on site. It is cheaper to buy the higher limit once than to lose the contract and rebuy.
2. Add contract works if you hold work in progress. Public liability answers for harm to other people and their property. The installation you have partly completed, and the materials on site waiting to go in, are your own risk until handover, and it is contract works cover rather than liability that pays if the site floods or burns.
3. Check the position on tools and on the van. Tool theft from vans is the routine loss in this trade. Tools cover is usually a separate section with conditions about overnight parking and locked vans, and those conditions are where claims fail, so read them before you park anywhere unusual.
4. Keep the scheme registration and certificates current. Notifiable domestic work in England and Wales is covered by Part P, and the practical route for most electricians is registration with a competent person scheme. Insurers expect the registration and the test certificates to exist, and a defective work claim will be assessed against them.
5. Declare heat work, height and anything unusual. Working at height, hot works such as soldering, fire alarm and emergency lighting commissioning, and work on commercial three phase installations are each rating questions. An electrician whose declared work is 'domestic rewires' has not bought cover for a warehouse.

Common questions

How much public liability cover does an electrician need?

Domestic work is generally written at £1m or £2m. Commercial sites, local authorities and main contractors commonly require £5m and will not admit you without evidence, so the limit is usually set by the work you want rather than by the work you do now.

Is electrician insurance a legal requirement?

Employers' liability is, once you employ anybody, including an apprentice. Public liability is not a statutory duty for a sole trader, but it is a condition of almost every contract, scheme and site an electrician wants to work on.

Does the policy cover faulty workmanship?

Liability cover answers for injury and damage your work causes, not for the cost of redoing the work itself. Professional indemnity or a defective workmanship extension is what answers for design and specification failures, and it is worth asking about if you certify or design installations.

Are my tools covered if they are stolen from the van?

Only under a tools section, and only if you met its conditions. Most policies require the van to be locked, and many exclude overnight loss unless the van is parked at your home address or in a secured compound, so check the wording against how you actually work.

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