FCA authorised · FRN 7249520117 325 0027Quote & buy →
Painting in Newport swings between two jobs that have almost nothing in common. One is the terraced city: streets of rendered, pebbledashed and painted masonry frontages that need doing again every few years because the weather off the Bristol Channel takes them apart. The other is industrial and commercial coating work around the docks and the estates, where the paint is protective rather than decorative and the substrate is steel.
Both are exterior-heavy, and that is what sets the risk. Terraced frontages sit directly on the pavement, so a spray gun is working a couple of metres from parked cars, shop windows and people walking past. On the industrial side you are spraying in or around working premises, with solvents, isocyanate products and hot work in places that are not empty.
The exposure a decorator carries here is therefore rarely a fall. It is a run of overspray carried further than expected by an estuary wind, a stripper or emulsion spill on a tenant’s floor, and an exterior coating that has failed early because it went on in the wrong weather. Apex arranges cover built around that, placed by a named broker who will present the risk properly.
Newport’s climate, its housing pattern and its industrial base each push a decorator’s risk somewhere different.
Spray drifts further in an estuary wind than anyone expects, and on a terraced street it lands on parked cars, shop glazing and the neighbouring frontage. Respraying one car panel is a small bill; respraying eleven because the wind changed at lunchtime is not. Underwriters know this and price for it, which is why how much you spray is worth answering honestly.
Exterior coatings applied in marginal conditions fail early: poor adhesion, blooming, blistering, or washed off before they cured. When a client sees a failed frontage two winters later, the argument is about preparation, product choice and whether it should have been applied that day at all. If you chose the system, that runs to professional indemnity. If the coating was damaged before hand-over, it is contract works. Neither is a public liability claim.
This is the exposure that matters most for the trade and it is exactly what public liability is there for — overspray onto vehicles and glazing, spilt paint and stripper on floors and furnishings, and damage done while working in an occupied room. Wordings do vary on spray and treatment risk, so we check the policy against how much spraying you actually do rather than assuming a standard trades wording covers it.
Typically yes, subject to conditions — usually a hot-works permit and a fire-watch period after you stop. On Newport’s older terraces, where sash joinery and painted timber sit against dry voids and soffits, those conditions are the ones an insurer will examine first after a fire.
It affects both liability sections rather than adding a new one. Working from ladders, towers and scaffold above a public pavement is a public liability exposure to whoever is beneath you, and an employers’ liability exposure to your own people. Tell us what proportion of your turnover is exterior and how you access it, because that is what the underwriter is pricing.
Tools and equipment can be covered against theft from van, site or premises, subject to underwriter assessment of security and overnight storage. Spray rigs, compressors and access equipment are worth listing accurately — they are the items most often found to be underinsured at claim.
Yes, in most cases. The requirement covers labour-only sub-contractors working under your control as well as employees, and crewing up for a contract repaint or a planned maintenance programme is exactly the situation it applies to.
It should be declared separately, because it is not the same risk as domestic decorating. Industrial coating brings solvent and isocyanate exposure, spray in or near working premises, confined spaces, and a client whose plant and production can be affected by what you do. It is perfectly placeable, but on a policy written for household decorating it is the sort of thing that is discovered at claim rather than at inception.
Tell us about your business and we’ll place it on the specialist market — or leave your number and a named broker calls you back, usually the same working day.
