Public liability may be one of those areas of insurance that it might be easy to overlook. This may be all the more surprising since claims involving your liability to members of the public and others may assume very considerable proportions – reaching a million pounds or more.
It arises because English law has long held that you have a duty of care towards others. If you are in breach of that duty of care, anyone who suffers loss as a result – in other words has their property damaged or suffers personal injury – is entitled to compensation from you.
Public liability insurance
Because of the considerable size of claims for compensation that may arise from public liability, many types of insurance provide indemnity against such claims.
Our static caravan insurance typically incorporates public liability cover. It is designed to protect you financially against claims from anyone who may be injured or have their property lost or damaged whilst in or around your static caravan.
As the owner of the home, you have a duty of care towards such individuals.
That duty of care also extends to guests you may have staying in your caravan. If you let your holiday home to paying guests, for example, they may claim your negligence if they are injured or have their property damaged whilst in or near your caravan. In that case, clearly it is especially important to consider the question of public liability insurance.
As an indication of the potential scale of the risks involved in meeting claims from members of the public injured or whose property is damaged in this way, public liability typically provides cover for claims of up to £2 million – or even £5 million. The higher the limit, of course, the more you need to pay in premiums.
Here at Cover4Caravans, our experience and specialisation in all forms of caravan insurance may help to ensure that you find the protection you need.
A related concern about liability claims, for example, is whether you might meet the legal costs and expenses involved in defending them. The public liability provisions of the static caravan insurance we arrange, therefore, includes cover for the payment of all costs and expenses to which the insurer agrees.
Public liability insurance and your site management
Public liability cover may be such a sensitive subject that the owners or management on which your static caravan is sited may insist that you have adequate cover against such claims.
Although the owners or management have the right to see proof of such insurance, however, you might want to be aware that in many cases they are unable to insist that the insurance you buy is the insurance they sell. This does not mean that they may not employ some fairly hard sell methods to persuade you to buy the insurance they offer. If that is the case you may want to stand your ground and arrange the cover through an entirely independent insurance provider – which may save you money – or at the very least check your lease agreement for the site very carefully to confirm whether there are any restrictions concerning the insurance cover for your static caravan.
Finally, even if the site owner charges you a small fee for checking over any cover you have arranged yourself, overall you could still make savings on the cost of your insurance.