Self-drive Hire insurance: Liability Package

The Howden Self-Drive Hire team understand that as the owner of a hire business, you’ve a lot to think about. Our job is to make life easier for you, which is why we’re excited to offer a Liability Package that puts all your liability insurances in one place.

What is the Liability Package?

Our Liability Package provides cover for public liability, employers’ liability, commercial legal expenses, and office liability – all combined into one policy. To summarise:

Public Liability: A form of business insurance that covers claims made by the public for injury, death, and property damage as a result of your business activities. In the event of a claim becoming a legal issue, the policy provides cover for compensation costs you may be required to pay and legal fees. With personal injury costs ranging from £3,000 for less serious claims to £23 million for serious injury or death, public liability is an essential policy to protect your business.

Employers’ Liability: A compulsory insurance required by law under the Employers’ Liability Act 1969. If you employ even one member of staff on any basis, including volunteers, and you don’t have employers’ liability insurance, you face being fined £2,500 for every day. Workplace injuries happen, so our policy provides cover for compensation costs and legal fees if your employee gets injured or becomes ill as a result of working for your business.

Commercial Legal Expenses: A variety of business insurance that covers a business from the costs of defending itself in the event of legal action being brought against them. This can include employment disputes, compensation awards, legal defence, and property protection.

Office Liability: A type of business insurance that covers the office building and its contents from financial loss. For example, this can be due to fire, storm, or break in.

Why do I need it?

As mentioned, employers’ liability is a legal requirement, whether your business has one employee or one hundred employees. The other liabilities are optional but are highly recommended. Our Liability Package has you covered from every angle so if the worst happens and you find yourself in financial difficulty because of legal action, your policy will get you back on your feet.

What are the benefits of adding the Liability Package to my cover?

• Ease – all your liability insurances will be in one place, under one policy. There’ll be no need to try and remember what’s insured where or juggling a handful of different policy numbers
• Peace of mind – a combined package insurance policy provides security by bringing together the most needed insurance covers into a single convenient package
• Protection – a combined solution protects both employees and the public, should something unfortunate happens because of actions by you or your business
• Suitability – by tailoring a package to the requirements of your business, you don’t pay for covers not relevant to you

Here are some examples of what could go wrong:

Public Liability

• Whilst collecting your vehicle, during the demonstration and handover, your hirer catches their feet on an electrical cord or slips on an uneven pavement causing them injury
• During the stage of validating your hirer’s identification on the DVLA licence webpage at the premises, you accidently spill coffee on their laptop causing irreparable damage
• Having valeted and washed your vehicle prior to a hire, a customer slips on the wet floor

Employers’ Liability

• During the process of vehicles being valeted on site, a member of the weekend staff slips on a wet floor injuring themselves
• A full-time employee suffers burns from their hot drink in the workplace as they trip on a frayed carpet which hadn’t been replaced or repaired
• An employee who is operating machinery suffers an injury due to the machines not being maintained correctly

Commercial Legal Expenses

• An employee, who when first joined the company had been a good worker, fails to do his job properly. Taking advice from the legal line, you're advised on how to proceed, avoiding wasted time and legal costs should the employee challenge the validity of the claims against them.
• You supply a hire vehicle to a customer and provide invoices for the total balance, but the hirer refuses to pay. Commercial Legal Services provide the cover for legal costs to sue the hirer and recoup the losses.
• An employee is called for jury service and will be away from work for ten days. This policy allows you to pay the employee and claim the costs from the insurance.

Office Liability

• A fire at your office destroys all the equipment inside. Your office policy provides cover for the equipment needed to do your job such as computers, printers, servers, and phones.
• Overnight the office is broken into and the contents of the safe are stolen. Your office policy provides cover for the money on site.
• If you own or lease the property, you’ll require cover for any improvements you make, i.e. equipment to make the site secure, CCTV, security lights, or extra gates. Your office policy will cover the cost of these improvements.

Think about it. You wouldn’t buy a car without all the parts to make it go, so why buy insurance without all the parts to protect you? Being the company director or officer of a self-drive hire business, you already have a million things to deal with. Allow us to take one of those worries off your mind so you can rest assured that your policy has your back when you need it. Contact our Self-drive Hire team today on 01252 377546 or [email protected].