Topic: Employers Liability

[Lavender]

Sorry if this question has been asked a thousand times - I have searched, promise!  We are not council run, we lease the ground from a charitable trust.  We have no employees but our members volunteer to work on the site (no reward, just our admiration).  We are considering inviting people on the waiting list to become involved in our association by coming along to our working weekends.  Do we need employers liability given that we've no paid staff?  We already have public liability insurance.  Also do we need Trustees Liability insurance to cover the committee?  Any help in getting through what's becoming a minefield would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[Unwashed]

I'm not terribly familiar with insurance but the position as I understand it is:

1. Employer's Liability Insurance: necessary for, and only covers, paid employee - it does not, and cannot, cover volunteers.

2. Public Liability Insurance: Pays out for accidents to people on site.  As leasees of the allotment site the Trustees (or possibly rather the management committee) are responsible for the management of health and safety on the common areas of the site, and possibly to some degree on tenanted plots too, and are liable if there is an accident due to their negliagence (Occupiers' Liability Act 1984).  It is prudent to have PLI to insure against the liability, but it is more important first to manage the health and safety - it's better to avoid accidents, and if there really is good evidence of the management of health and safety it will go some considerable way to defeating a claim of negliagence.

3. Personal Accident Insurance.  Pays out if your volunteers hurt themselves.  If your volunteer does something stupid and damages third-party property (like they're strimming and a stone is flicked up and breaks the glass in a greehouse) then the volunteer is personally liable for the damage, so it's only fair on your volunteers to indemnify them against claims for negliagence, and this is what your PLI does (though in the case of a couple of broken panes the excess won't cover it so the committee just need to shell out themselves - the committee is still responsible for the actions of their volunteers).  But if your volunteer, through their own stupid fault, cuts their own leg off with the strimmer then they have no claim against anyone for their injury.  What can be a comfort to volunteers is if the organisation provides them with PAI so that if they hurt themselves in the course of their volunteering then they can claim compensation on the PAI policy.

4. Trustee Liability Insurance covers the trustees for legal claims against them for their negliagent conduct as trustees.  It doesn't cover them against claims for accidents, that's what PLI does, but it covers them for claims of negliagent administration of the trust.

[Lavender]

Thanks for taking the time to post that helpful reply Unwashed.  We'll be discussing it at our next meeting, and this will be really useful.