In the current climate the majority of businesses are following Government advise of temporary closure of their premises and construction sites, apart from the obvious disruption to business this can also impact your insurances.
It’s important to consider that your policy wording may contain unoccupied buildings conditions, many insurers are agreeing to wave or amend these conditions, but this shouldn’t be taken for granted and they all differ slightly in approach. We would therefor recommend you contact ourselves to verify your insurers position.
This is equally true for construction sites that are being closed down and left unattended.
Property Protection Procedures
In the meantime, we have put together the following list of procedures you should consider in a temporary closure to help secure your buildings and sites:
- Alarm systems – Ensure you have an alarm system with remote signalling in place with respondents available and ready.
- CCTV – If possible, have a CCTV system put in place with sufficient lighting.
- Physical Security – This includes all areas of physical security, i.e. windows and doors shut and locked, well maintained fences, gates etc.
- Inspections – Arrange for the building to have weekly internal and external inspections carried out.
- Maintenance – Essential maintenance should still be carried out as far as reasonable.
- Fire Prevention – Operational fire/sprinkler systems in place with all fire doors shut.
- Waste Removal – All external waste should be removed, and external bins moved at least 10m from the building and locked.
- Utilities – If any utilities aren’t essential, they should be shutdown.
- Preferably remove items of plant and machinery from unattended sites, if they can not be removed make sure they are disabled and within a locked and secure compound, your policy may have additional security requirements.
- Remove all hands tools and smaller items of plant from unattended sites or secure them in locked shipping containers, again your policy may have additional security requirements.
For further information on the topic and all other insurance queries, contact Bullerwell & Co Ltd today.
