A crew arrives at your venue at six in the morning and leaves at midnight, having put a tower of truss, the aluminium framework that lights and screens hang from, into a room full of your chairs. Somewhere in your folder is a certificate saying they are insured. Public liability insurance for events is the document every organiser asks for and files without reading. Reading it is the part that matters.
In short
- Only one of the two documents you should be asking an audio visual (AV) supplier for is required by law. Employers’ liability insurance is compulsory for almost every employer. Public liability insurance is not.
- The useful part of a certificate is the description of the business, the dates it runs between, and whether the insurer is authorised.
- A certificate proves somebody is insured. It says nothing about whether they are competent, and your own duty stays with you either way.
Only one of these two documents is required by law
Employers’ liability insurance is compulsory. The Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires every employer carrying on a business in Great Britain to insure, and to maintain insurance, under one or more approved policies with an authorised insurer, against liability for bodily injury or disease sustained by employees in the course of their employment.
The certificate is not meant to be hard to obtain either. Regulation 5 of the 1998 regulations requires an employer to display copies where relevant employees work, easily visible and readable, until the policy expires or ends. GOV.UK puts it plainly: display it where employees can access it, and produce it for an inspector on request. A supplier who says that document will take a fortnight to find has answered a different question from the one you asked.
Public liability insurance for events is a contract requirement
There is no equivalent statute for public liability. Nothing in law compels a supplier, or you, to hold it for an event. It exists because somebody wrote it into an agreement: the venue’s hire terms, or a local authority granting permission to use its land.
Two things follow. Nobody is checking it on your behalf, so if neither your booking paperwork nor the venue’s asks for it, it does not get asked for at all. And the level written into a venue’s terms is a general requirement, not one set for your event. Treat it as a starting point.
Separate this as well: your suppliers’ policies protect your suppliers. If a guest trips over something nobody hired in, that sits on your side of the line.
The lines on the certificate that decide whether it helps
Everyone looks for the limit of indemnity, the most a policy will meet on a claim. It is the line the venue asked about and the least useful one to you.
Start with the description of the business. Every policy is written against a description of what the insured firm does, and work falling outside it is a conversation nobody wants to have afterwards. If a certificate describes equipment hire and the job involves rigging a truss over seated guests, ask about that before anyone builds anything. Our post on what to check before a rig goes up explains why that work sits in a category of its own.
Then read the dates. The period of insurance has to reach the get-in, which is the window when equipment is brought into the building, and the de-rig, when the build comes back down. A certificate collected in March for a show in November may have been replaced by then.
Check the insurer on the register
The Act is specific about this. It requires an approved policy with an authorised insurer, and defines an authorised insurer by reference to permission under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 to write that class of business.
That is checkable. The Financial Conduct Authority publishes the Financial Services Register, a public record of the firms it or the Prudential Regulation Authority has authorised, which also lists firms reported as offering regulated services without the right authorisation. Search the insurer named on it. If the name on the paper belongs to a broker, the insurer will be named as well.
Equipment you have hired, and crew you have not met
One situation a certificate does not speak to is dry hire, where you take the equipment and run it with your own people. Once the kit is in your possession the hire agreement usually makes you responsible for it while it is with you. The terms of hire answer that, and it is the paragraph to read before the van arrives.
Another is subcontracting. A policy treats a firm’s own employees and an independent contractor working alongside them differently, so the useful question is whether any part of the job is being handed to somebody else, and whether that firm carries its own documents. Asking is routine. Outside help is common in December, and being told about it is the whole point.
That is the practical case for using fewer companies. We supply audio, video, lighting, rigging and staging from one source, which leaves you one set of documents to read.
Where a certificate stops
Insurance answers after something has gone wrong. Competence stops it going wrong, and it shows up in different paperwork: method statements, and the name of the person who will be on site. Our post on what to ask a supplier before you book goes through the rest of that list.
Your own duty stays with you. A contractor’s insurance is a contractor’s arrangement with an insurer, and it has no effect on what the law asks of you as the organiser. Being let down by a supplier is common enough to plan for, and the plan is checks done early.
One honest note. We are an AV company. We can tell you what a certificate should say and send you ours. For your own arrangements, talk to whoever arranges them.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need public liability insurance for an event?
There is no law that makes it compulsory for an event. In practice the answer is usually yes for a different reason: venues generally require it in their hire terms, and local authorities usually require it before granting permission to use a public space. Check the venue’s own conditions first, because they are what set the requirement.
What insurance should we ask an AV supplier for?
Ask for two documents. Employers’ liability insurance, which almost every employer must hold by law and which covers the crew they bring on site, and public liability insurance, which responds to injury or damage to other people and their property. Then read the description of the business on each one, and check the dates reach your de-rig.
When should we ask a supplier for the documents?
At the point of booking. A certificate arriving two days before the get-in leaves no time to resolve anything it raises. If the booking is made a long way out, ask again closer to the date, because policies renew and the version in your folder may no longer be live.
Sources
- Legislation.gov.uk · Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, section 1
- Legislation.gov.uk · Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Regulations 1998, regulation 5
- GOV.UK · Employers’ liability insurance
- Financial Conduct Authority · Financial Services Register
If you are putting a supplier brief together and you are not certain what to ask for, tell us what the event is and what is going up in the room, and we will tell you which documents are relevant to that job. You can reach us through the contact page or by email at hire@eventproductiongroup.co.uk, and if what you want is a second opinion on how the whole job should be put together, we will give you one.
