Our club has just been informed by Forestry England that we must increase our insurance to £10,000,000 of liability if we want to continue to maintain the way-marked trail on their land. Have any other groups had the same message?
That suggests they are getting far more claims than before so might be looking to 'share' the cost.
Unsure if still the case but FC Scotland was self-insured...so any loss was paid directly from FCS. If that hasn't changed and is same in England then I'm guessing claims are going up and payments are being made...to offset that cost they may be looking to share the burden of insurance with those helping the FC to maintain trails.
Or it could be intentional to make it very difficult for your club to get/afford the insurance so you then stop being involved and forestry have control over it all...
That is complete guesswork and not based on any current facts or knowledge... hopefully completely wrong, but I'm a cynic when it comes to the forestry.
They want £10m for everything now.
Although they don't appear to be giving permissions for a lot of stuff - especially MTB.
I have £10m insurance through the ABCC but they won't give me permission for guiding/coaching - despite being ok with them wanting to take 20-30% of my profits.....
Not here for Chase Trails although we are going through a protracted discussion to set up a new agreement which must be in place before we can restart work after C-19 stoppages.
This (we are told) is based on a national template and when in place means we will operate under FE insurance arrangements. In our near 20 years this has always been the principle.
I’d rather not go into to much detail on a public forum but feel free to email me at stuartATchasetrails.co.uk if you want to go through it further.
Single biggest personal accident claim in the UK is this one:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/19/23m-compensation-crash-agnes-collier
Notice how old that claim is.
That's why limits need to go up - claim amounts are huge compared to what they used to be. £1-2m doesn't cut it anymore and hasn't for quite some time imho. Even Employers' Liability (usual limit £10m since I started in insurance 23 years ago) ain't really enough.
Her injury was spinal. Exactly the sort of thing that could come about from stacking a bike. Last time I heard, just rest of life care following quadriplegic level injury was estimated at £7 million.
If there's a chance the claim hits the policy limit then FE are probably worried that they'll carry the extra.
Dirkpitt74, if I read your post right your issue is running coaching or guiding as a business rather than the volunteer work that switchbacktrog is struggling with, is that right?
Either way FE locally are up against it at the moment. They seem to have taken the C-19 stoppage to the extreme and with the massive influx of visitors and preparing for the Commonwealth Games they have massively turned their attention away from a number of things that should be bread and butter.
Chase Trails as a group are seriously cheesed off with it and after forming our relationship back in 2002 feel seriously undervalued by the whole farce but we’re just about hanging in there to try to get things started again.
@st yes that's correct - I commented mainly regarding the FE wanting £10m insurance as I know this is causing issues up & down the country talking to other coaches.
That does seem to be the one thing all FE areas are agreed on though.
I feel really sorry for you guys, I know Clixby's have done all the work recently but it's no where near as valuable as the work Chase Trails do.
If it wasn't for you guys the trails wouldn't be there.
Not sure what other trail associations are volunteer led around the country but are they all having the same issues?
Rich S - I remember our senior claims team paying out the first £1 million claim, early 90s.
Our club has just been informed by Forestry England that we must increase our insurance to £10,000,000 of liability if we want to continue to maintain the way-marked trail on their land. Have any other groups had the same message?
No experience with FE but in general I've noticed people pushing insurance requirements up - companies that would have accepted £2 or 3M are now asking for £5M and government departments are frequently demanding £10M.
What are you insuring though? The members of the public who follow the trail and somehow come to harm through your error or your volunteers whilst working on the trail. The exposure seems dramatically different in those cases, and if you are insuring users of the trail on ordinary days I'd be wanting carte blanche to close the trail, do emergency maintenance, diversions and repairs etc without going through any FE approval/discussion process. If you don't have autonomy on how your work, and safety critical decisions at the very least I'd be making that 100% clear in writing to FE so if a liability case ever arises you can clearly show that they were the controlling mind.
Are your club BC affiliated and does their insurance extend to what you need?
That suggests they are getting far more claims than before so might be looking to ‘share’ the cost.
I don't think its about volume of claims - its value of the big claims. They should be willing to share their claim statistics with you to help you assess risk.
poly......We are insuring ourselves whilst working on the trail with permission from FE and working under an agreement with them, not insuring the trail or any users on it. Our Cycling UK affiliation provides £5,000,000 cover but it is for events rather than trail work.
Our insurance company is not willing to increase our public liability from £5,000,000 to £10,000,000 for trail work. Neither are we able to find a "top-up" policy. Are there any groups out there who have managed to acquire this level of insurance in order to operate on Forestry England land?
Would changing status to a community interest company help? It would also limit the group members liability in certain situations as it's in effect a limited company.
I would also check how what you do sits under CDM regulations and who is in the key roles, who is the client, the principal designer, the contractor/ principal contractor, etc
That suggests they are getting far more claims than before so might be looking to ‘share’ the cost.
It may have nothing at all to actual changes in circumstances (more claims) and quite simply be a policy change driven by some smart Alec. We’ve had our insurance policy go from 10m of cover to 25m. This was so local authorities could move the entire burden onto the 3rd sector.
We use Zurich...if that is any help.