Tradesman: Bricklayers Insurance

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Stone and Memorial Masons Insurance

Public Liability Insurance

PLI is cover for unintentional damage or injury caused to others by a business.

Every business has a legal duty to protect the public from injury or wrongful acts, either deliberate or caused by negligence.

Public liability insurance is bought to cover against claims made against you and to pay damages for death, injury or damage to property, and the subsequent legal costs if you are found at fault.

Without it, the process of defending a claim can be difficult, expensive, and very time consuming.

Employers Liability Insurance

Employers liability insurance is compulsory and covers a business's legal liabilities to meet claims from employees who fall ill, are injured or die because of their work. Employees include anyone who works for you, including contract workers and apprentices.

Stonemasons Insurance

Stonemasonry is one of the world's oldest building trades. The work can range from carving blocks of stone for use in private residences, churches, office buildings and hotels, to repairing historic buildings or laying and fitting stonework on big construction projects.

If you're largely workshop based, i.e. a banker mason, you'll cut and dress stone before giving it a textured or polished finish with hand and power tools.

As the fixer or setter mason, you'll often work outdoors in all weather on building sites, and work at heights on scaffolding to place the finished stone into position.

Working both inside and out, the job can be dangerous and physically demanding, with a lot of lifting and carrying heavy weights and equipment.

Workshops can be noisy and dusty. Workers must wear protective equipment - safety boots, ear defenders and goggles - and employers must follow health & safety rules on the amount of time workers use vibrating tools.

Work-related health risks include HAVS (Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome), silicosis, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), hearing loss and skin disorders.

Health and safety risks are higher than normaland many small businesses consider liability cover as a vital way to manage risk.

Make sure your insurer is fully aware of the type of work you're carrying out and where, whether it's repairing old buildings and monuments or making and fitting stonework such as fireplaces and archways for tunnels.

There are likely to be limits on the height and depth you can work at, as well as the type of structure.

Most insurers exclude work on blast furnaces, wells, tunnels and canals.

Bridges, viaducts, docks and railways, towers, steeples and chimney shafts are other common no-go areas for insurers.

Things that could go wrong:

• A block of stone slips from the lewis and crushes a site worker below the crane
• A worker falls from scaffolding while repairing a church steeple
• A delivery driver loses an arm while unloading a stack of marble slabs
• You have Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS), caused by using vibrating tools on a daily basis and have to give up work
• A saw operator sues for compensation for back pain caused by lifting and carrying heavy blocks of stone
• A worker falls 20 feet from scaffolding, and suffers fractured ribs and broken collarbone
• A decorative piece of marble worth thousands of pounds is damaged in transit

Memorial Masons

Memorial masons or monumental masons specialise in carving gravestones and inscriptions, and also install, clean and repair headstones, mostly for the funeral business.

You could be a sole trader specialising in the restoration and renovation of monuments and memorials or memorial retailer with your own premises and showroom.

You will possibly want to insure your office, shop premises, workshop, yard and stock, tools and diamond cutting and polishing machinery used to carve and inscribe headstones, as well as vans used to deliver memorials.

Many stonemasons have display areas where customers can discuss and choose a suitable headstone. These can be potential accident spots, as are cemeteries where visitors to gravesides can be injured. Public liability cover is designed to protect your business form the impact of relevant claims.

After seven fatalities and many injuries in the past 10 years from unstable gravestones, councils throughout the UK are becoming increasingly worried about the risk of being sued.

British Standard

In response to these risks, local authorities have teamed up with the memorial industry to produce the new British Standard for memorials.

As a result many local authorities now only permit memorial fixers/installers/erectors and memorial mason businesses registered with the National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM) or the British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons (BRAMM) to carry out works on their sites.

NAMM registered installers must have a minimum of £5 million public & products liability insurance and £10 million employee liability insurance. BRAMM demands similar levels of liability cover.

Self Employed Sub-contractors

If you are self employed but work on a sub-contracting basis for other memorial businesses, you still need to have your own insurance that complies with the schemes.

So if an insurer offers you public liability cover of less than £5 million, it could mean they don't fully appreciate the needs of your regulated business.

NAMM affiliates are bound by the Code of Business and Working Practice which means they must guarantee the quality, stability and fitting of the final product, usually up to 10 years.

Employees

Many memorial mason businesses are long established family concerns, operating with just half a dozen employees or so.

The work of the monumental mason can be physically demanding and dangerous. In the workshop there are health hazards from manual handling as well as exposure to granite stone and marble dust.

If you're a sole trader, critical illness cover, income protection, private healthcare and life insurance are all worth considering.

Many memorials today are produced in factories abroad and imported. If you have your own factory and import marbles and granites you may also want to consider cargo insurance.

What could go wrong:

• A worker sustains a serious injury using a compressed-air chisel
• A gravel chip pierces the eye of a trade visitor to your workshop
• A block of marble crushes your hand and you can't work for 6 months
• A newly erected granite memorial collapses on a visitor to the cemetery

National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM) runs a registration scheme for qualified memorial fixers/installers/erectors and memorial mason businesses who have proven competency to install a headstone and base to the required standard.

BRAMM (British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons) maintains a register of nationally accredited businesses and registered fixers.

Keyman Insurance

If a key employee falls ill or passes away, there could be a serious downturn in trade, so keyman insurance could be worth considering to cushion the business from losses caused by temporary interruption to trading.

Directline Tradesman Insurance

Direct Line's new Tradesman Insurance is designed for traditional building and allied trades (established professional tradesmen and craftsmen with up to ten manual employees).

Just one small mishap could jeopardize a stonemasons ability to earn an income. Direct Line's Tradesman Insurance protects tradesmen in such situations, providing a comprehensive standard policy. This gives up to £1 million public liability cover, with the option to increase up to £5 million and add additional covers, allowing the customer to mould the insurance to their needs.

Standard cover:

• Public liability
• Optional cover
  • Employers liability
  • Tools and equipment

£100 excess in respect of damage to third party property.

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