Protecting health and safety inspector with public liability insurance, from less than £55* per year
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Health and safety consultant insurance covers the professional whose advice is read back to them after something goes wrong. A risk assessment that missed a hazard, a method statement that didn’t match the work, training signed off shortly before an incident: when an accident happens or a Health and Safety Executive inspector arrives, the paperwork gets examined and the consultancy that produced it gets drawn in. Professional indemnity leads the policy for exactly that reason.
Professional Saver arranges tailored insurance for health and safety consultants, occupational health and safety specialists and small consultancies from £55* a year, with public liability as standard and professional indemnity scaled to the organisations you advise. Get a quote online in five minutes; documents arrive the same day.
Professional indemnity insurance carries the defining risk. If a client alleges your negligence caused them financial loss, a hazard your risk assessment didn’t identify, health and safety law applied wrongly, an audit or site inspection that passed a workplace later found wanting, professional indemnity insurance pays the compensation and the legal costs of defending the claim. Defence is where most of the money goes, because an incident is reconstructed in hindsight with the outcome already known, and separating your advice from how the client actually implemented it is an expensive argument to have unfunded.
Public liability insurance covers your physical presence in other people’s workplaces: inspections, walkarounds, audits and training delivered on client premises, on sites and around live plant. If a third party is injured or property is damaged around your work, public liability insurance covers the compensation and legal costs, with £1 million as standard and options up to £10 million, which is what principal contractors and larger organisations tend to specify before granting site access.
Business equipment cover protects the laptop, monitors and testing kit the consultancy runs on (£100 excess), and employers’ liability insurance is usually a legal requirement once you employ anyone, including associate consultants working under your direction. Every policy also includes products liability, legal expenses insurance and £10,000 of financial loss cover as standard, and personal accident insurance can be added during the quote.
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Employers Liability
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Personal Accident
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Professional Indemnity*
* Due to the specialist nature of your profession, we’ll arrange a separate policy for your professional indemnity cover to complement your Professional Saver policy. Please get a quote online for the other covers you need and contact us to discuss your personalised professional indemnity quotation.
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Worth stating plainly, because it is the point buyers most often assume wrongly. If a client is prosecuted and fined, no UK insurance policy can pay that fine: criminal penalties are not insurable. The same is true of the most serious end of enforcement, including the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007: outcomes there are not something a policy pays. What insurance does address is the civil side: professional negligence, meaning a client claiming your professional work caused them injury or financial loss, and the legal fees of defending that allegation. Legal expenses cover, included as standard, gives you access to legal advice early, which is usually when it changes the outcome. If your work regularly puts you in front of regulators, say so at quote stage so nothing is assumed.
Because the duty stays with the client but the blame travels. An organisation cannot delegate its duty of care for the health and safety of employees, so the legal obligation for health and safety at work remains theirs. That does not stop them looking to the consultant who advised them when an incident, an improvement notice or an investigation lands, and it does not stop their insurer doing the same.
Because your work is judged after the event it was meant to prevent. A risk assessment reads differently once someone has been hurt. Occupational safety and health advice is inherently a judgement about what is reasonably practicable at a given level of risk, and hindsight is not a neutral reader.
Because clients and frameworks check before instructing. Principal contractors, local authorities and procurement teams routinely require proof of professional indemnity and public liability at named levels before a consultancy is engaged, and membership of professional bodies, alongside your own qualification and experience, commonly carries insurance requirements too. The certificate is part of qualifying for the work.
Every policy includes public liability, products liability, legal expenses and £10,000 of financial loss cover as standard, from £55* a year. You then shape the insurance policies to the practice:
Worldwide liability cover for temporary work abroad is included for up to 14 days, excluding the USA and Canada.
From £55* a year for the base policy, with professional indemnity the main variable: the size and sector of the organisations you advise, the level of cover your contracts require, whether you employ anyone, and your claims history. A sole consultant advising small businesses on risk assessment sits at the affordable end; a consultancy acting as competent person for industrial sites needs limits that respect what happens there. Barkdene Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and you can get insurance online in about five minutes, itemised, with monthly instalments available.
Safety consultancy is judged by the incident that did happen, not the hundred that didn’t. Get a health and safety consultant insurance quote online from £55* a year, backed by an insurer rated AA- (Stable) by Standard & Poor’s, and protect your business for as long as your assessments stay on file.
* Total number of live policies as of 31/10/2025
From only£55per year
From only£55per year
From only£55per year
From only£55per year
From only£55per year
From only£55per year
Start with the contract, which usually names a figure; £1 million is the common floor and larger clients often specify £2 million or more. Then sense-check against consequences rather than fees: the exposure attached to a serious incident bears no relation to what you charged for the assessment.
PI works on a claims made basis: the policy in force when the claim arrives responds, provided cover has run continuously since the work was done. This matters more in safety than almost anywhere, because the claim arrives with the incident, not with the invoice, and the assessment being questioned may be several years old. Run-off cover is the thing to ask about if you ever wind the consultancy down.
Describe the appointment precisely when you quote. Acting as an organisation’s appointed competent person is a deeper, ongoing relationship than delivering a one-off assessment, and the honest description is what makes the certificate dependable when a claim tests it.
Yes: public liability insurance covers you onto client premises and business premises for audits, site inspection work and training, answering for accidents and injuries or property damage, while professional indemnity answers for the content of what you advised. Tell us the split between desk work and site work when you quote, because it shapes the public liability limit you actually need.
Plenty of consultants span all three; quote for the mix. Our fire protection consultancy insurance page covers fire risk assessment specifically, and food hygiene consultancy insurance covers the food side, both shaped the same way. Where the work extends into contamination, emissions or land, health, safety and environmental consultancy insurance is the page that fits.
