Builder insurance
- Thread starter DiyNutJob
- Start date
Phew!
It's already happening. We are haemorrhaging work (due to financial woes) at an astonishing rate. I went to look at a damsel-in-distress job last weekend, whereby the client had been let down previously by two busy builders. I said I would help. She emailed the following day to say she'd accepted another builders' price and was thankful for my visit. I was the third apparently. And I thought that job was nailed on.
What you need to look for and the builder shouldn't have any problem showing it to you is his public liability insurance.
Imagine if a scaffold board remains unsecured (seen this a couple of times) and falls on a car or worse, on someone.
If the builder has no insurance, they'll disappear and the injured people will come after you.
Other insurance for poor workmanship is worth nothing because they'll always find a way to wiggle out of paying.
Imagine if a scaffold board remains unsecured (seen this a couple of times) and falls on a car or worse, on someone.
If the builder has no insurance, they'll disappear and the injured people will come after you.
Other insurance for poor workmanship is worth nothing because they'll always find a way to wiggle out of paying.
Probably to do with your insurance.
Insurance on the whole is worthless. The reason you don't hear more about it is because people are too embarrassed to say they have been had. The only insurance you have is your luck, the rest is just faith.
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Sure, but in the case of injury or damage to property caused by the builder, at least you would not have to worry if they have public liability insurance.
Then if the insurance doesn't pay it's not your problem.
It is your problem if the insurance says it is an invalid claim. They are well protected with get away clauses. In the case of failed claim, the builder goes bankrupt, and you pick up the bill.
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That's quite a cynical view! Believe me, in the commercial world, insurance is not worthless! Few years ago our company bought some big kit from Spain and we incorporated it into our machine for an end user. The spanish bit, as it turned out, wasn't fit for the purpose - it couldn't maintain the duty cycle our client demanded. They claimed on us and we claimed on our PI, and our insurance coughed for well over £100K - kept us out the poo (but didn't do our premiums any good for a few years)
It's the builder's insurance.
If they don't pay up, the claim will be against the builder.
If the injured person tried to claim against you, your home insurance would simply push the claim back to the builder's insurance.
The key element is that you have shown due diligence by checking that the builder was insured, so you've discharged your liability.
If you are the one responsible for doing injury (say the injured person was walking past your house and a hammer dropped on him), why would your home insurance be relevant? You probably haven't read the small prints, and contingent clauses.
Insurance is not worthless if you can afford lawyers. As a home owner, when faced with a choice of spend your limited money on sucking up the repair costs or paying the lawyers, you would probably choose the former. Even if you choose the latter, the lawyer fee can't be claimed back from the people you are claiming from. So, all odds are against you.
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