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Public liability responds to injury to other people or damage to their property arising from what you do — on your premises, on a client’s site, or quayside. Where you work on other people’s property or in a shared building, this is usually the cover that does the most work.
Employers’ liability is a legal requirement for almost every UK employer under the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, and it catches labour-only sub-contractors as well as people on your payroll. Crewing up for a dry-dock period or a seasonal peak does not take you outside it.
Commercial property and stock covers buildings, tenant’s improvements, plant, machinery and stock against fire, escape of water, storm, impact and theft. On the waterfront the flood and storm elements are the ones underwriters scrutinise.
Business interruption covers the loss of gross profit and the increased cost of working after an insured event. It is the cover most often set too low or on too short an indemnity period, and both errors surface only at claim.
Goods in transit, stock in storage and marine cargo matter to anyone moving or holding other people’s goods through the port. Standard commercial wordings and marine wordings draw the boundary between them in different places, which is exactly where uninsured gaps appear.
Professional indemnity applies wherever you give advice, a design or a professional opinion — naval architects and marine surveyors as much as consultants, agencies and accountants.
Cyber covers the response to a breach or ransomware, the business interruption that follows, and the liabilities to customers whose data you held. Freight forwarding, customs and logistics businesses are heavily systems-dependent and are targeted accordingly.
Southampton is one of the country’s principal deep-water ports, handling container traffic, vehicle imports and exports and a large cruise operation, with marine and leisure moorings running down Southampton Water and up the Itchen. A very wide range of local businesses are exposed to it: stevedoring and terminal support, freight forwarding and customs agents, hauliers, warehousing and cold storage, ship agency and chandlery, marine engineering, boatyards, sailmakers and riggers, and the hospitality and retail trade that turns over with the cruise calendar.
Two things follow for insurance. The first is that marine risk is a separate market. Work on, over or immediately adjacent to the water — craft afloat, vessels in your care, custody or control, lifting over water, diving and dive support, sea trials — is commonly excluded or heavily restricted in a general commercial combined policy and is written instead in the marine trades and marine liability market. A business that has drifted from land-based work into afloat work without telling anyone can be carrying an exclusion it does not know about. See our guides to marine trades insurance and marine cargo and engineering cover.
The second is dependency. A firm whose revenue depends on a terminal, a shipping line, a single large customer or the cruise season carries a business interruption exposure that has nothing to do with damage at its own premises. Supplier and customer extensions, denial of access and non-damage extensions are worth reading line by line rather than assuming, and the indemnity period has to be long enough to cover a disrupted season rather than a disrupted month.
Southampton sits at the head of Southampton Water where the Test and the Itchen meet, and parts of the city — the dock estate, Northam, the lower Itchen, Woolston and Weston, Millbrook and Redbridge — are low-lying land close to tidal water. Tidal flooding, surface water flooding and the combination of the two are a normal part of the underwriting conversation for commercial premises here, and they are the reason two firms in the same trade a mile apart can be quoted very differently.
What tends to be asked: the flood history of the premises and the immediate street, the finished floor level relative to ground, whether stock and plant sit at floor level or are racked clear, what flood resilience measures are in place, and whether there is a plan for getting trading again. Where flood cover is available it may carry a separate and much larger excess than the rest of the policy, and it is worth knowing that before renewal rather than after a claim.
It is also worth being clear about what Flood Re does and does not do. The Flood Re scheme supports household insurance; it is not a route to flood cover for a commercial property or a commercial policy. Our notes on flood risk and commercial property insurance and getting insured again after a flood set out the practical options.
Working for a port operator, a terminal, a shipping line, a principal contractor or a large local employer usually means signing up to their conditions. Those conditions routinely specify minimum limits of indemnity, name additional insureds, require waivers of subrogation, and impose indemnity or hold-harmless obligations that go further than the liability you would carry at common law.
Insurance follows the contract only if somebody makes it. A liability you assume by contract may sit outside the ordinary scope of your public liability wording, and an indemnity given without a cap can outrun any limit you buy. The practical discipline is to read the insurance and indemnity clauses before signing, check them against the policy you actually hold, and get the wording adjusted or the clause negotiated rather than discovering the mismatch at claim.
Waterfront and dockside premises weather faster than inland ones. Salt-laden air attacks fixings, cladding fastenings, roller shutters, external metalwork and plant housings, and driven rain and wind on exposed frontages find their way into a building envelope that inland premises never test in the same way. Insurers treat gradual deterioration, wear and rust as maintenance rather than insured damage, so the cost of neglect lands on the business, not the policy.
The consequence for a claim is practical: a storm claim on a roof that has been quietly corroding is an argument waiting to happen. Keeping evidence of inspection and maintenance of roofs, shutters, gutters and external plant is the cheapest form of claims preparation there is.
Underinsurance is the most common and the most expensive avoidable problem in commercial insurance, and it bites hardest where rebuilding is complicated — older industrial and dockside buildings, listed and conservation-area stock in the older parts of the city, and anything with difficult access. If the sum insured is materially below the true reinstatement cost, an average clause can reduce every claim proportionately, not just total losses.
The same applies to business interruption. Gross profit as an insurance definition is not the accountancy figure, and an indemnity period chosen because twelve months sounds tidy is rarely long enough for a business that has to re-fit specialist premises or win back a contract. Our underinsurance check and the note on reinstatement cost and buildings underinsurance work through both.
A tidal surge combined with heavy rainfall puts water through a ground-floor unit on low-lying land near the Itchen — property damage and business interruption respond, subject to the flood terms, the excess and the sum insured.
A load is damaged in a warehouse while awaiting collection for the docks — whether that falls to a commercial property policy, a goods-in-transit section or a marine cargo wording depends entirely on where the boundary was drawn when the cover was placed.
A contractor working quayside drops equipment and damages a third party’s property — public liability responds, but the contract may also require the principal to be indemnified on terms wider than the policy.
A business dependent on cruise-season footfall loses a season to disruption at a supplier rather than damage at its own premises — only a non-damage or supplier extension will help, and only if it was bought.
A ransomware attack locks a freight forwarder out of its own booking and customs systems — cyber cover responds to the response costs, the interruption and any third-party liability.
An employee is injured during a night shift crewing up for a vessel turnaround — employers’ liability responds, with HSE involvement likely.
Often not. General commercial combined wordings frequently exclude or heavily restrict work afloat, vessels in your care, custody or control, lifting over water and similar marine exposures, which are written in the marine trades and marine liability market instead. If any part of what you do happens on, over or immediately beside the water, say so when the risk is presented rather than assuming the wording stretches.
Frequently yes, but the terms vary a great deal by street and by building. Insurers look at flood history, floor levels, how stock and plant are stored, and what resilience measures exist. Where cover is offered it may carry a separate, larger flood excess. Where the mainstream market will not write it, specialist and non-standard markets sometimes will, so it is worth having the risk presented properly rather than taking a first decline as the answer.
Check the clause against the schedule rather than assuming. Contracts commonly specify a class of cover, a minimum limit, additional insured status, a waiver of subrogation and a period for which cover must be maintained after the work ends. Any of those can be missing from a policy that otherwise looks adequate, and contractual indemnities can extend liability beyond what the wording contemplates.
Usually yes. Labour-only sub-contractors — people working under your direction, using your equipment or your methods — are generally treated as employees for the purposes of the 1969 Act. Bona fide sub-contractors carrying their own insurance are a different matter, but the distinction turns on how the work is actually done, not on what the invoice says.
Commercial insurance is placed in a national market rather than a local one, and Apex is a Bristol-based, directly FCA-authorised broker arranging cover for businesses across the South and South West. What matters is that the risk is presented accurately — the flood position, the marine element, the contract conditions and the sums insured — to underwriters who write that class.
Send the current schedule, the statement of fact and any contract conditions you are working to. A review of what you already hold against what you actually do is usually more useful than a fresh quotation in isolation, because most problems in commercial insurance are wording and sums insured, not price.
Related reading: Landlord insurance in Southampton · Commercial property insurance in Southampton · Public liability in Southampton · Employers’ liability in Southampton · Cyber insurance in Southampton · Areas we cover
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This page is general information, not advice on a specific policy.
