Good Morning all

Looking for advice on Liability Insurances required from Contractors when acting as Principle Contractor.

My employers are a small property maintenance company who provide Gas and electrical installs and maintenance as well as general property maintenance.

We use Subcontractors for a lot of this work some Labour only some Bona fide. As part of our due dilligence we ask all contractors to provide evidence of current Public Liability Insurances. We also ask for evidence of their Employers Liability Insurance where they have any persons working with them.

My question is do we actually need to ask for the Employers Liability and is there any responsibility on the Part of Principle contractor for ensuring this is in place or is this a matter purely for the contractor?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I don't think you actually need to ask for proof of Employers Liability, and I don't think that a bereaved party of a bona fide subbie will be able to sue you as a party contracting with their employer for the fact that their employer didn't have the legally required insurances. You are not their employer.  

Your EL should cover labour only subbies.

The same is not the case for Public Liability.  It is probably the case that your insurer requires that all your subcontractors have PL of some sort - mine has a requirement "You must ensure, that in connection with any work undertaken by any … sub-contractors, You obtain evidence they have current policies providing indemnity for Public and Products Liabilities that <list of requirements such as minimum limit of indemnity and a indemnity to principal>".

However, since you (probably) have to ask them about PL, and since it's a statutory obligation on them to have EL, I'm not sure why you wouldn't ask them to demonstrate EL, or why you'd employ anyone who wasn't able to prove EL.

Hi Simon

To add to what Kate has said, suppose the small subbie doesn't have e.g. Employer's Liability Insurance, there might be little point in the injured employee sueing their employer who simply goes bankrupt (as happens quite often).  Might be able to chase the value of a Director's house (minus whatever mortgage etc is higher up the list of creditors).

So, next step for the plaintiff is to work out who DOES have the resources to foot the compensation and the Principal Contractor is thus the next place to seek redress.

Thanks for the feedback. Have now also had this clarified by our own Insurers and its a condition of our own Policy that we request Employers Liability from any Bona Fide Subcontractors we engage so going forward will continue to request it for all BFSC.

Edited by user 14 March 2023 16:31:18(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified