Insurance questions

[Mrs C]

Any insurance experts out there? Just looking at insurance cover for a friend who rents a small unit on an industrial estate. I made the mistake of reading the details of the policy and wished I hadn’t started.

Two questions

1) There have been a number of attempted break ins on the estate which has security barriers and cctv. The last attempt was with a stollen car attempting to ram the roller doors. My friend is worried that he would be expected to make good any damage to the unit from a break in e.g. repairs to the doors. This seems to me to be unreasonable and repair should be made by the landlord - thoughts?

2) I am confused by the ‘plant’ terminology. If he damaged his unit e.g. one of his machines caught fire, where in a policy would you expect to find cover for repair to the unit? It is excluded from the public liability, own plant is not applicable and hired in plant only seems to give machinery hire examples.

My brain hurts, help!

 

[MikeG.]

......... a stollen car.......

Now I'm hungry. How did they get that in the oven? :lol:

 

[Mrs C]

By raisin the roof?

 

[Seb]

Any insurance experts out there? Just looking at insurance cover for a friend who rents a small unit on an industrial estate. I made the mistake of reading the details of the policy and wished I hadn’t started.

Two questions

1) There have been a number of attempted break ins on the estate which has security barriers and cctv. The last attempt was with a stollen car attempting to ram the roller doors. My friend is worried that he would be expected to make good any damage to the unit from a break in e.g. repairs to the doors. This seems to me to be unreasonable and repair should be made by the landlord - thoughts?

2) I am confused by the ‘plant’ terminology. If he damaged his unit e.g. one of his machines caught fire, where in a policy would you expect to find cover for repair to the unit? It is excluded from the public liability, own plant is not applicable and hired in plant only seems to give machinery hire examples.

My brain hurts, help!

Commercial insurance claims is my day job, so I should be able to help. Re your first point, this is usually the case, but it depends on the lease agreement. Majority of the time the landlord will need to get this covered on his buildings policy if it's his property and not an improvement made by your friend for his business. Just double check the lease, but he should be good to go on that one. Re point 2, again, damage to the unit would be on the landlord's insurance, the difference normally being if your friend was negligent in some way, the landlords insurance may then look to subrogate from your friends insurers on the public liability section of the policy once they've paid out for the damage. When you say it's excluded, do you mean they've specifically excluded fire damage to the property from machinery due to the type of business?

Side note - I currently have around 200 claims in my allocation, and two of them are impact damage/theft to a commercial unit, and the other a burnt down unit due to a CNC machine that caught fire...!

 

[Mrs C]

Fab, thank you. I have re read the hired in plant which covers damage to temporary buildings that you are using, but I am not sure what their definition of temporary is.