Posted By Claire Sheehan Is there any guidance as to what levels of insurance are required for consultant safety advisors? Thanks for your help

Posted By Phil V Claire Unless you intend to employ people (in which case you would need to think about employers' liability), the main cover you will need to consider is Public Liability (PL) and Professional Indemnity (PI). In the simplest terms PL covers you if you physically injure or damage a third party or their property and PI is for injury or damage which arises from advice you have given. For PL cover you should be guided by the levels of cover required by your customers, but assuming they don't have a required level, most insurers typically offer £5 million as a minimum. Rather than trying to buy PL cover as a free-standing item, you will generally be best off buying a basic office contents insurance policy which normally includes PL cover as a freebee. Due to the potentially protracted nature of PI claims, the very minimum you should be looking at is £1 million (for me this costs just under £1,000), to buy a higher level of cover may well be prohibitive, but again you will need to consider this in respect of the nature of advice, training etc given and the industries you work for. My final comment would be that if you are just doing a bit of general consultancy and training you may not need PL, especially if you mainly work through third parties who have their own PL cover, but don't leave home in the morning without your PI cover. I hope this helps.