Posted By GavinR We have a 3rd party contractor conducting some maintenance of equipment, inspection and calibration. He is 1 man operation and has been working for the company for many years and widely recongised as being very competent standard. The issue is he has no PL insurance due to the insurance company quoting him excessively high figure. I know PL is not compulsory but i'm uneasy with having this contractor conduct his business on our premises without this insurance. He has suggested he may be able to work through a company he previously was employed by (we employ the larger company with EL AND PL and they subcon him to us). This will still not provide him with PL but (if the PC agreed to this) it would satisify our requirements as the PC will cover any damage/incident under their insurance? Would i be correct in thinking this?

Posted By GavinR thanks swiss.... that was very useful. I take it from your message you feel we are doing the wrong thing trying to keep a working relationship with this contractor? We know he can do the work to the standard we need, we know he understands and works to our H&S requirements and has a good track record with regards safety performance. We do wants to retain him for these reasons. If we can find a workable solution that ensures we looking after ourselves and that he is covered to complete the work i don't see why that is a negative thing? I'm asking for the opinion of others who may have experienced similar issues before and if they agree we me or believe this is not the correct path to take. Cheers

Posted By GavinR Hi, thanks for your reply. Yes, my belief is that should he cause any significant damage to property or loss of business then if we took action against him he would be very unlikely to be able to pay any of the costs associated with such action. Suppose this will be a consideration for our mgt team, as you said its something we will have to assess against what could go wrong. Cheers

Posted By GavinR Again thank you for your reply. Yeah, again if he was to fail to maintain or calibrate equipment and it failed causing a loss to business then what do we do? I do not foresee any effect to public but potentially to other contractors working on our site. Cheers

Posted By hooperman3 Had this before with subbies aquinted to us, first thing to do is check with your insurers, most PL policies have within their underwriting policy a clause that covers sub contractors who are sole traders