Public liability insurance for gardeners?

In case you accidentally injure someone or damage their property.

What’s typically covered by public liability insurance

Legal or medical expenses relating to claims against your business for:

• damage you or your team caused to someone else’s property while working at a commercial or residential site, or as a result of a garden feature created
• injury caused to someone else while you or your team are working, or as a result of the work carried out

For example:

• you’re about to prune a tree in a customer’s garden and you drop your ladder by mistake, which smashes a window in their house
• your employee left a wheelbarrow out on the pavement and a pedestrian trips over it, breaking their arm
• a casual labourer you’ve brought in for the day scratches a customer’s car as they’re carrying a stack of paving slabs

Read more about public liability insurance

Employers’ liability insurance

In case your employee is involved in an accident or mistake while they’re working for you.

What’s typically covered by employers’ liability insurance for gardeners?

Legal or medical expenses relating to claims against your business for:

• your employee injuring themselves or getting sick over the course of their work for you

**Employers’ liability insurance is required by law if you have people working for you. Without it, you could be fined up to £2,500 a day for each employee.**

For example:

• your employee falls down a hole you’ve dug for a water fountain but failed to signpost, and they break their ankle

Tools insurance

In case your gardening tools are lost, stolen or damaged.

What’s typically covered by tools insurance?

• theft of your gardening tools, such as lawnmowers, from a commercial or residential site you’re working at
• accidental damage to your gardening tools from a site you’re working at

For example:

• while you’re working in a customer’s front garden, a group of kids break into the rear garden and steal your petrol hedge cutter and strimmer from the shed
• one of your employees spills their coffee over your electrical on-site radio, so it stops working

Read more about tools insurance

Stock insurance

In case the products or materials you’re responsible for are lost, damaged or stolen.

What’s typically covered by stock insurance?

• accidental damage, loss or theft of the materials you use to carry out gardening jobs for your customers

For example:

• you’ve left some mortar pointing mix for a garden path in a bag outside a customer’s house and it gets rained on, so you have to throw the mix away and replace it
• you leave half of the turf in your van and a group of teens break into the van and steals the turf

What you’ll need additional cover for

• stock insurance doesn’t cover you against loss, theft or damage of materials while you’re travelling between jobs – this is covered by goods in transit insurance instead

Read more about stock insurance

Business and office equipment insurance

In case your office equipment is lost, stolen, or damaged.

What’s typically covered by business and office equipment insurance?

• loss, damage or theft of the things you use to run your business (such as your work laptop or a filing cabinet) that you keep at the address you’ve specified in your policy

For example:

• a flood at your business premises results in water damage to the computer you use for invoicing your customers
• there’s a break-in at your business premises and your printer is stolen

What you’ll need additional cover for

• if you own or rent the building that you use as your business premises and you’re responsible for insuring this yourself, you may need buildings insurance

Read more about business and office equipment insurance

Hired-in plant insurance

In case plant machinery you’ve hired in is lost, stolen, or damaged.

What’s typically covered by hired-in plant insurance?

• accidental damage to items of the plant that you’ve hired from someone else
• loss or damage to the hired-in plant
• legal liability for the loss or damage to the hired-in plant and ongoing hiring charges

For example:

• your employee tries to use the wrong key for a digger you’ve hired, causing it to break
• a digger you’ve hired is stolen from your construction site, and the hiring charges still apply while you’re waiting for a replacement

Read more about hired-in plant insurance

Own plant insurance

In case plant machinery you own is lost, stolen, or damaged.

What’s typically covered by own plant insurance?

• theft of the machinery that you own, especially larger items that you use to complete your day-to-day garden maintenance or landscaping activities
• accidental or malicious damage to your own plant items

For example:

• your digger gets stolen from the site you’re working at when you’re on your lunch break
• one of your employees crashes the digger into a wall by accident, so it needs repairing

What you’ll need additional cover for

• wear and tear – in case your own plant equipment breaks down or needs repairing for no particular reason and it’s not covered by your warranty, you could get it insured under mechanical breakdown cover

Read more about own plant insurance

Contract works insurance

In case your gardening work experiences a setback that means you break the terms of the contract

What’s typically covered by contract works insurance?

• works in progress on a construction site for both domestic and commercial premises
• damage caused by things like fires, floods, storms, vandalism or theft to tools and equipment needed to complete a job that are left on site
• repair costs for the work you have in progress on a garden landscaping or garden maintenance site if it’s damaged or destroyed
• labour, materials and tools required to get the job back to the stage it was at before the setback happened

For example:

• you’re the main contractor, and vandals set fire to the site overnight, causing damage to the ongoing work and delaying the completion date
• as a result of a fire, most of the materials for a contracted job – such as wooden decking and shrubs – are destroyed and you need to replace them, delaying the completion date

Read more about contract works insurance

Legal expenses insurance

In case you’re faced with legal costs from running your business.

What’s typically covered by legal expenses insurance?

• legal expenses resulting from your day-to-day business activities, like disputes with employees
• the cost of legal claims relating to property damage, nuisance or trespass
• HMRC investigations, and tax and compliance disputes
• includes a tax advice helpline, a 24/7 confidential legal helpline, and crisis PR support to help you protect your business’s reputation

For example:

• if you’re investigated by HMRC (or selected at random for an audit), this cover could help with the tax enquiries – for you and any other directors, as well as for the business
• you need to defend your legal rights following the dismissal of an employee

Read more about legal expenses insurance

Personal accident insurance

In case you or anyone you’ve covered has an accident.

What’s typically covered by personal accident insurance?

• injury or death at work or outside of work, for anyone covered on the policy
• lost income, medical costs and hospitalisation benefit

For example:

• you’re chopping up some wood in a customer’s garden and you lose a finger in the process
• your casual labourer breaks their leg while they’re on a night out

Read more about personal accident insurance

Professional indemnity insurance

In case you’ve made a mistake in your work or provided a service that didn’t meet the expected standards.

What’s typically covered by professional indemnity insurance for gardeners?

Claims against your business for:

• professional negligence that causes your customer to suffer financial loss
• advice you’ve given that turns out to be incorrect

For example:

• you’ve designed a garden for a customer and there’s a problem with the location of the outdoor lighting you’ve installed, so they have to have their house rewired

Read more about professional indemnity insurance

Is public liability enough for third party property damage?

In some situations you may need more than public liability to cover certain kinds of property damage. Learn about hired-in plant cover and contract works cover.

Can I just cover my most expensive tools?

Make sure you cover the total cost of replacing all your tools or you’ll only get a proportion of your claim paid out if something happens to them. Learn about tools cover.

Which type of workers do I need insurance for?

Employers’ liability insurance is a legal requirement if you employ people.

If you have people working for you, including bona fide subcontractors (BFSC), labour-only subcontractors (LOSC), part-timers, or full-time staff, employers’ liability insurance is required by law.

Read on for our simplified guide to the difference between labour-only subcontractors and bona fide subcontractors.

Will tools insurance cover all my equipment?

Depending on what you use to do your work, you may need other covers.

You may need more than tools insurance – for example, business equipment insurance if you have a work laptop, plant insurance if you use machinery.

Does landscape gardening insurance cover my work correctly?

Make sure you’re picking the right cover to protect you properly. It’s important to know that if you have another trade or job, you’ll need additional cover. For example, do you need to consider builders insurance or groundworkers insurance?

Do I need cover for other types of work?

If you provide other services, make sure you’re covered:

• Garden design insurance
• Garden maint inc treefelling
• Fencing contractors
• Tree-felling and surgery
• Garden shop
• Garden centre
• Labourer insurance
• Plumber insurance

Which public liability cover limit should I choose?

Think about the maximum possible loss your business could face in the event of a claim, and make sure you take legal fees and damages into consideration. You can choose from three levels of coverage – £1 million, £2 million, or up to £5 million.