FCA authorised · FRN 7249520117 325 0027Quote & buy →
Nailsea is a small North Somerset town that grew enormously in the second half of the twentieth century, and that history is still visible in every job. Around a modest older core sit estate after estate of houses built between the 1960s and the 1980s — similar layouts, similar pipe runs, similar first-generation central heating. A plumber working here spends a great deal of time on systems that were all installed at roughly the same time and are all wearing out at roughly the same time.
The risk that follows is not dramatic. It is that a modest job in a modest house causes damage worth several times the invoice. Microbore that has been disturbed once too often, an early combi conversion sitting on top of an older system that was never properly flushed, a cylinder cupboard nobody has opened in fifteen years — and then a floor of laminate, a plastered ceiling and a fitted kitchen underneath it.
Apex is a Bristol-based commercial broker. We arrange plumbing and heating cover for firms working across this kind of stock, placed by a named broker who will present the risk properly rather than let a trade code decide it.
Nailsea sits on the edge of the low-lying North Somerset Levels a few miles from Bristol, with a small historic core, a great deal of late twentieth-century estate housing and villages around it. Each part of that produces its own plumbing risk.
The damage is worth more than the job. A bathroom or a boiler swap is not a large contract, but a leak that runs overnight through a first-floor bedroom into a fitted kitchen produces a claim that has nothing to do with the size of the invoice. That mismatch is the reason a domestic plumber needs a proper liability limit rather than the smallest one available.
Ageing systems and blame. When every system on a street is forty years old, some of them will fail shortly after you have been in the house for an unrelated reason. Recording the condition of what you found — and what you told the customer about it — is what separates a difficult conversation from a liability claim you cannot rebut.
Drainage and ground water. On low-lying ground, below-ground work and surface-water arrangements need more thought than they do on free-draining sites. Getting a soakaway or a connection wrong here shows up faster and more visibly than it would elsewhere.
Gas Safe registration for any gas work, with the registration covering the specific categories you actually carry out rather than a general listing.
Water fittings regulations and byelaws — backflow prevention, fluid categories and notification of certain installations to the water undertaker.
Unvented hot water storage competence — the discharge arrangement and safety devices are where the severe scalding and water-damage claims come from.
Building Regulations notification for controlled work, either through a competent person scheme or through the local authority.
Work at Height Regulations 2005 and asbestos awareness — both routinely engaged when lifting floors, working in loft spaces and disturbing old boiler and pipe insulation.
A joint disturbed during a boiler change fails overnight and water runs through a ceiling into a fitted kitchen — public liability, with the repair cost far exceeding the original job.
An old microbore run is nicked while lifting a floor and leaks under the boards for days before anyone notices — public liability, with floor, ceiling and decoration all in the claim.
A system that was already failing gives out shortly after an unrelated visit and the customer says you caused it — a causation dispute decided by your records.
A gas appliance is left in an unsafe condition, or work is done outside your registration categories — a regulatory problem and, in the second case, uninsured.
Below-ground drainage work on wet, low-lying ground fails and causes damage or a nuisance to a neighbour — public liability.
A van is broken into overnight on an estate road — tools cover, subject to overnight security and storage conditions.
The limit should match the damage you can cause, not the fee you charge. A single overnight leak in an ordinary house routinely runs into tens of thousands once ceilings, flooring, kitchens and contents are counted, which is why we would not normally recommend the smallest limit on offer to a working plumber.
No. Public liability responds to the damage your work causes to other property, not to the cost of putting your own workmanship right. The failed fitting is your cost; the ruined ceiling below it is the claim.
Not automatically, but you will have to show it. On stock of this age, that means noting what you found, telling the customer in writing where a system is at the end of its life, and keeping the record. That evidence is what defends the claim.
It follows your Gas Safe registration and the categories on it. Anything outside those categories is generally not covered, so registration changes and apprentices working towards categories should be told to us.
Usually a specified public liability limit, the employers’ liability certificate, and confirmation that the policy names plumbing and heating work. Read the sub-contract too — indemnity clauses sometimes ask you to accept liabilities the policy will not follow you into.
Almost always. Someone working under your direction on your job with your equipment counts as an employee for compulsory insurance, even if they invoice you.
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.
