Topic: Bublic liability insurance

[goodlife]

We have bublic liability insurance issue come up in our AGM. Well are "donkey's" years old private allotment site own by the allotment society and we never had one... :-X
Would like  to know more how others have dealt with the issue...have you got one, from who, how much, what's involved , "can of worms"... anything....

[Unwashed]

There are two kinds of liability that any prudent committee should insure itself against.

1. The committe owe a duty of care to anyone on the site, whether they're there legally or not.  So if someone has some kind of accident on your site and you are found liable then without insurance the Committee pays.

2. When your committee-organised working parties are doing their work, any damage they do is probably the responsibility of the individual who caused the damage, but that's an appalling situation to put a volunteer in so the committee really should provide insurance to cover that liability.

There's also the situation where a member of the working party might injure themselves, and you'd do well to provide some personal accident insurance for that.


But first things first:  how are you managing the health and safety on your site?  Insuring against liability is one thing, but it's much better not to have accidents.

[Trevor_D]

I think you're mad not to have it. As Unwashed says, the best way is not to have accidents in the first place. But would you consider not having house insurance?

Get in touch with NSALG. They can arrange both Public Liability - to cover Unwashed's point 1 - and Employer's Liability - point 2. We have both. You have to affiliate to NSALG to apply for the insurance, and that costs £2 per member. We charge an annual supplement per member - irrespective of how much land they rent - of £4 to cover both affiliation and insurance. No-one has complained; it was queried at the AGM why it was added as a supplement, but the meeting overwhelmingly agreed that as it was the member who was insured, that was the fairest way.

And there are two bonuses to affiliation. The Committee has access to unlimited legal advice & help; and NASLG run a discount scheme with Kings Seeds which not only gets the members cut-price seeds, but is a nice little earner for the Society. And as they also send free copies of their quarterly magazine on the basis of 1 per 10 members, our Committee each gets a free copy as a perk.

[Unwashed]

Sorry, just to clarify - I agree completely with Trevor.  When I say it's better not to have accidents I mean just that, but you're foolish and irresponsible not to insure your liability as well.

[tonybloke]

I totally agree with the 2 (two) previous posts!!!

when you are affiliated to NSALG, the insurance is through 'Bluefin insurance'

[goodlife]

Brilliant...cheers! If we can get some to understand that all...we more and less already spoke in those lines, but some old chaps were having none of it.... ::)
..."oh...you are opening can of worms now".... ::)

[RW]

There might not be any need to take out separate insurance for an allotment society for council owned allotments.

Councils should already have cover on behalf of specified community associations (e.g. community councils, etc.) to cover all risks, material damage, money, public and products liability, employers liability, employee dishonesty, personal accident.