Usually group/charity insurances cover a mixture of the insurances below, either as a group cover or as individual cover as appropriate to encompass their day-to-day activities. It should not be onerous or expensive for groups to extend cover, if necessary, given sufficient notice of the requirement. Basic cover appears to be around £120 p/a.
Without the right insurance cover in place, if a claim for loss, injury or illness is brought against the group, they may have to defend it with the group's own funds.
As an absolute basic requirement, the Council will require insurance for public liability and to cover the duty of care for staff (volunteer or paid).
Public liability insurance
Pays your legal defence costs and damages you are legally liable to pay to other parties for injury or damage caused by your activities or products. Public liability insurance for voluntary groups will financially protect the group in the event a claim is bought against the group for damage or injury to a member of the public.
Critically, with a lot of insurers, the definition of members of the public does not extend to volunteers. If the Public liability insurance is also covering employer liability, then to include the same insurance for volunteers, the group needs to include a level of employer’s liability insurance within the PL insurance, even if they do not employ anyone. The Council will require Public Liability cover of £5,000,000 (five million)
Employer Liability Insurance
Pays your legal defence costs and compensation you are legally liable to pay to employees who have suffered an injury whilst working for you.
Employer Liability insurance is a legal requirement for any organisation, including voluntary organisations, that have paid employees on a full-time or part-time basis, minimum legal limit £5m.
While volunteer groups don't legally need the cover if they do not have any paid staff, there is still a duty of care for the volunteers. Insuring volunteers against injury and illness usually falls into either public liability insurance or employer's liability insurance - depending on the group's insurance policy. The Council will require Employers’ Liability cover of £10,000,000 (ten million)
Professional Indemnity
Pays your legal defence costs and damages you are legally liable to pay to other parties if it causes a client to suffer a loss - either financial or reputational.
This insurance is more relevant to activities undertaken by advice giving or counselling organisations and tends to arise from advocacy, assessments, consulting work, design and implementation of care programmes, diagnosis, education, teaching/training, investigations, publishing, and remedial treatments. The Council will require Professional Indemnity cover of £2,000,000 (two million)