Public Liability Insurance

If you hold any events during the year, you do need to consider taking out public liability insurance? Most venues will not cover you under theirs (although, obviously, it is worth asking them).

Why PLI? It protects you if anyone attending suffers personal injury through attending your event. It can pay for the costs of subsequent legal expenses or compensation claims, and it should cover product liability (if you sell goods) and property owners’ liability if your society is responsible for or owns a building. You might also need to consider damage to any venue you hire – checking whether your hire contract means that you carry liability for this if anything goes wrong.

You can also tag onto it other bits of insurance you might require, such as fire and theft of sales stock.

If you are considering taking out this sort of insurance, it might be worth your contacting other groups in your area to see who they insure with and what their experience has been (for example, historical societies, U3A, etc.).

You can, of course, google charity PLI on the web, but it’s often a good idea to get some recommendations – and always get more than one quote. Make sure that you cover everything. So, for example, if you have an event which includes a guided walk, you might need to include that – unless you make it clear on the programme/booking form that the walk is undertaken at participants’ own risk.

If holding an event, like a festival which goes beyond a single hired room and which is likely to attract large numbers of people (particularly older folk), you might also want to ensure that you have a couple of first aiders in attendance. This may sound as if it is a little over the top, but it is worth considering.

Linda J Curry

(Article dates from Autumn 2017)