Beams's insurance position
We carry our own professional indemnity insurance. Your builder carries public liability and employer's liability. You may want home insurance to cover specific events. Here's a plain-English split.
Insurance during a renovation isn't usually thought about until something goes wrong. Here's a plain-English split of who's insured for what, so you don't have to chase it later.
Your builder's insurance
Every builder in the Beams network carries:
- Public liability insurance — at least £5 million of cover. This protects against damage or injury to third parties caused by the work.
- Employer's liability insurance — at least £5 million of cover. This protects the people working on the project.
- Builders' all-risk insurance is recommended for projects involving significant structural or heavy works. Whether your builder carries it depends on their wider business — ask if it's relevant to your project.
We verify these at onboarding and at renewal. If a policy lapses, the builder isn't able to take on new projects until it's reinstated.
Beams's insurance
We carry professional indemnity insurance covering the design and advisory work we provide. If a service we deliver turns out to have an error in it that causes you a loss, our Professional Indemnity (PI) insurance is the route to address that — and the article When Beams covers costs describes how that interacts with our policy commitments to you.
Your home insurance
It's your responsibility to manage your relationship with your home insurer. Inform them of the renovation work, and consider specialist renovation insurance or insurance designed for occupied homes during a build — best done at the start, not the end.
A few practical things to check:
- Notify your insurer before you break ground. Some policies require it.
- Confirm what's covered during the build — particularly for partially demolished structures, exposed services, and stored materials.
- Confirm what isn't covered — for example, theft of building materials from an unlocked site.
This is your relationship with your insurer; we don't manage it for you.
When something happens — who's involved
If damage is caused by your builder's work or their team, the builder's public liability is the route. Beams isn't the designer on a project — under the Home Improvement Contract (HIC) we only provide design intent and your builder is the designer — so if something on the design or specification side causes an issue, your builder's insurance is still the route, not ours. If something happens that's not down to us or the builder — for example a leak from a neighbour's flat — your home insurance and the relevant third-party insurer are the route.
The article What happens when something outside our control disrupts the build describes how we coordinate with third parties when an external event interrupts your project.
Related articles
- What Beams is and how it works
- How we vet builders
- The contracts behind your project