Employer's Liability Insurance for non-exec directors.

[Pell]

Hi,

We are a small gardening business operating as a Community Interest Company. We have 2 executive directors with 50-50 stake in the company who actively run the business and carry out all the labour, and a third, non-executive director who is there basically to allow us to be eligible for external grants and funding, but who has no share in the company and will never be remunerated (as there is nothing to remunerate him for - he is not doing any work). There are no other people the business employs.

Under these circumstances, do we need an Employer's Liability Insurance? Any help would be much appreciated!

[gryffron]

1st Question: Are the directors actually employees? They may or may not be.
https://www.1stformations.co.uk/blog/ar ... ecretaries.
If the answer is no, then employers' liability insurance would be useless as it wouldn't payout anyway.
If the answer is yes - then depends on other factors.

Gryff

[didds]

a billion years ago when I ran my own company, which employed just me, I went through the hoops with this.

legal requirement to have ELI.

but when checking with insurers they all said that as i was the director they wouldn't pay out if there was a claim for liability to myself as an employee, no matter how valid. QED Id be paying for something useless.

Soo I never took out ELI. Nobody ever prosecuted me.

Things may well have changed since then of course.

[Charlottesquare]

Given you no doubt need/ought to hold third party/public liability insurance, including employer liability within such a policy seems a no brainer, doubt it will even increase the premium.

I certainly would not operate without such cover in place, all to easy for someone to trip over something and sue you. (we ended up with a £10k bill , which was met by our insurers, because a third party wandered over one of our car parking spaces (uninvited) and hurt themselves stumbling on a sunk cobble stone.