Professional Indemnity Insurance for New Planning Consultants — Your First Policy (2026)

Reviewed by Matthew Bartlett, Director, Apex Insurance Brokers Limited · Last reviewed 2026-08-05

1. Do you actually need PI as a new planning consultant?

Let's separate two things that often get blurred together: what the law demands, and what your clients demand.

On the legal side, there is no statute that compels a planning consultant to carry professional indemnity insurance. Unlike solicitors or architects registered with certain bodies, planners are not subject to a compulsory PI regime set out in legislation. If you are a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), you are bound by the RTPI's Code of Professional Conduct, which sets expectations around competence and acting in the public interest; carrying adequate insurance is part of behaving as a responsible professional, but it is a professional and commercial reality rather than a criminal-law requirement.

Now the part that actually decides the question for most new firms: your clients. The moment you start advising on planning applications, appeals, site appraisals, viability assessments, environmental statements or masterplanning, you are giving advice that people rely on to spend money and make decisions. When that advice turns out to be wrong — or is simply alleged to be wrong — you can be sued for the loss that follows. PI insurance is what stands between that claim and your own bank account.

In the real world, the requirement usually arrives in a contract. Local authorities, housebuilders, developers, architects who sub-contract to you, and consultancies that appoint you as an associate will almost always insist on a minimum level of PI cover before they will engage you. Public-sector frameworks and formal tenders make it explicit, often naming a required limit of indemnity. Being uninsured doesn't just expose you to risk — it quietly locks you out of a large slice of the work you want to win.

So the honest answer for a new planning consultant is: not legally compulsory, but effectively unavoidable. If you intend to take on clients, you need it.

2. When cover must start — from your first engagement

A common and costly assumption among first-time buyers is that insurance is something you can arrange once you're "properly up and running", or once the first invoice is paid. That's the wrong way round.

Your PI policy should be in force from the moment you take on your first client instruction — arguably from the moment you first give advice that someone might act on. The reason is simple: it is the advice itself that creates the exposure. If you carry out a site assessment in March, invoice in April, and a dispute over that assessment surfaces the following year, the question insurers ask is whether you held cover at the relevant time. Start your policy after the work is done and you've left the earliest, most formative pieces of your practice completely unprotected.

Day one matters for a second reason too. Many client contracts require you to confirm — sometimes in writing, sometimes via a certificate — that PI cover is already in place before you begin. If you can't produce it, the engagement stalls. Having the policy live from the outset means you can say yes to work without scrambling.

The practical rule of thumb: arrange your PI cover to start on, or just before, the day you open for business — not the day you feel established. If you've already done a small piece of work before reading this, tell your broker; the way a policy treats past work is something worth getting right rather than guessing at. You can start a quote here and we'll walk through the timing with you.

3. How much cover does a new firm need?

The headline number on a PI policy is the "limit of indemnity" — the most the insurer will pay out. Common options for a small consultancy are £1 million, £2 million and £5 million, and you'll sometimes see higher limits for larger or public-sector work. So how do you pick?

For a new planning consultant, three things tend to drive the figure:

• What your contracts tell you to hold. This is the most important input and often settles the decision on its own. If a developer or a public-sector framework specifies £2 million as a condition of appointment, that is your floor for that work — there is no point buying £1 million if it disqualifies you from the jobs you want.
• The scale of the projects you advise on. A claim isn't sized by your fee; it's sized by the loss your advice could contribute to. Advising on a modest householder application carries a different exposure to advising on a large residential scheme or a viability assessment that underpins a multi-million-pound development. The bigger the schemes, the more head-room you want above the minimum.
• The type of planning work you do. Pure advisory and application work sits differently from expert-witness appeal work, environmental impact assessment, or anything with a design or technical element. More technical, higher-consequence services generally justify a higher limit.

A frequent first-timer instinct is to buy the smallest limit to keep the premium down. The better instinct is to buy the limit that both satisfies your client requirements and reflects the worst realistic claim from your worst realistic project — because a limit that's too low leaves you personally exposed for the shortfall. If in doubt, it is usually inexpensive to step up from, say, £1 million to £2 million, and a broker can show you that comparison directly.

One more thing to check: whether a limit is offered "each and every claim" or "in the aggregate" (a total for the whole year). For a new firm this is worth understanding, because it changes how much protection you really have if more than one claim lands in the same period.

4. What shapes the cost of a first policy

We won't quote prices here — every firm is different and any figure plucked from an article would be misleading. What's genuinely useful is understanding what an underwriter looks at when pricing PI for a brand-new planning consultancy with no trading history. Knowing this helps you present your firm well and avoid surprises.

For a new firm, the main factors are:

• Your estimated fee income (turnover). Because you have no track record, insurers work from a sensible projection of your first-year fees. Give a realistic estimate — over-inflating it pushes the premium up unnecessarily, while under-stating it can cause problems later.
• The activities you actually perform. The specific planning services you offer matter more than a job title. Development management advice, appeals, EIA co-ordination, heritage or environmental work, viability, and any design input all read differently to an underwriter.
• Your qualifications and experience. RTPI membership (for example working towards or holding Chartered Town Planner status) and your years of relevant experience reassure an insurer that the advice behind the firm is sound — even though the firm itself is new.
• The limit of indemnity and the excess. A higher limit costs more; a higher excess (the first slice of any claim you pay yourself) generally reduces the premium. This is a lever you can adjust with a broker.
• Your client and sector mix. Public-sector, large-developer and overseas work can carry different risk profiles to advising smaller private clients.

The reassuring part: as a new firm you have no claims history to explain and no legacy work to disclose. That clean slate often makes a first PI quote refreshingly quick.

5. "Claims-made" — the one concept to understand

This is the single most important thing to grasp about PI, and it catches out first-time buyers more than anything else.

PI insurance is written on a claims-made basis. That means the policy that responds to a claim is the one in force when the claim is made against you — not the one that was in force when you did the work. This is different from, say, motor or home insurance, where you claim on the policy that covered you at the time of the event.

Two consequences follow, and both point in the same direction.

First, continuity is everything. If you let your PI policy lapse — even for a few weeks — and a claim then arrives about work you did while you were previously insured, there may be no live policy to respond. The historic policy has expired; the current gap means nothing is in force. That is why you renew every year without a break, for as long as you could still be sued for past advice.

Second, the "retroactive date" matters. Your policy will usually carry a retroactive date, and it covers work done on or after that date (provided the claim is made during the policy period). For a new firm this is straightforward — you're insuring from the start of your practice — but when you renew or switch insurers in future, you want that retroactive date preserved so your early work stays covered. Losing it is a classic way to accidentally strand your own history.

The takeaway for a first-time buyer: buying PI is not a one-off purchase, it's the start of an unbroken chain. Set it up correctly from day one and keep it running, and the mechanism works quietly in your favour for years.

6. How to buy your first policy — what you'll need

The good news for new planning consultants is that the information required is modest, precisely because you have no history to unpack. In most cases you'll be asked for:

• Your business name and structure (sole trader, partnership or limited company).
• An estimate of your first-year fee income.
• A description of the planning services you'll provide.
• Your professional background and qualifications, including RTPI membership if you hold it.
• The limit of indemnity you want (and any limit your clients require).
• Confirmation that you're not aware of any circumstance that could give rise to a claim.

That's usually the bulk of it. There's no need to reconstruct years of accounts or list past matters — you don't have them yet. Answer honestly and completely; the duty to give a "fair presentation of the risk" applies even to a first policy, and small inaccuracies now can create big problems if you ever need to claim.

Working through a broker rather than buying blind has a specific value for a first-timer: someone who knows the planning sector can match your actual activities to the right insurer, make sure the limit and retroactive date are set correctly, and check the wording covers the work you really do. That guidance is exactly where mistakes get caught before they matter.

When you're ready, you can begin your quote online and we'll take it from there.

7. Common first-timer mistakes to avoid

• Waiting until you have a client before insuring. By the time the contract lands, you may need the certificate that day. Have cover ready.
• Buying the lowest limit to save money. If a limit is too low for the projects you take on — or below what a contract demands — you've bought a false economy.
• Under-declaring your services. If you tell the insurer you only do advisory work but then take on appeals or EIA co-ordination, that extra activity may not be covered. Declare everything you might do.
• Guessing your turnover badly. A wild estimate in either direction causes problems. Give a considered, realistic figure.
• Letting the policy lapse later. Because PI is claims-made, a gap can strip cover from work you've already completed. Renew without a break.
• Not reading the exclusions and conditions. Every policy has them. A quick conversation with a broker turns dense wording into a clear picture of what is and isn't covered.

8. About Apex — and how fast we can help

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is an FCA-authorised insurance broker based in Bristol (FRN 724952). We arrange professional indemnity cover for consultants and small firms across the UK, and we spend a lot of our time helping people buy their very first policy — so the questions you're weighing up are ones we answer every week.

For a new planning consultant, our job is simple: understand the work you'll actually do, match it to an insurer who's comfortable with it, set the limit and retroactive date correctly from day one, and explain the wording in language that makes sense. Because a new firm has so little to declare, we can usually turn a quote around quickly — often much faster than first-timers expect.

Whether you're launching a sole practice or setting up a small consultancy, we'll help you get properly covered before your first instruction lands.

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This guide is general information, not advice on a specific policy.