Marie HallowesOperations Director
Charities that work with animals face their own unique risks, we work with a small panel of specialist insurers that can provide with farm insurance policies.
Marie Hallowes, Operations Director
City Farm Insurance – Public and Employer Liability
There are a number of considerations for City Farms when considering their risk management. We explore a number of them here and these are issues that we discuss when reviewing the public liability insurance needs for City Farms.
Animals can be unpredictable and when humans are in close proximity, there is always a risk that an animal might kick, bite, charge or cause injury directly to a member of the public. Such eventualities should be covered by the public liability insurance section of your city farm insurance policy. Your responsibility is to provide a safe environment and it would need to be demonstrated that a claim was the result of a failure in your duty of care.
From an insurance perspective, it is important that the insurer understands the nature of your activities. For example, some insurers that we work with are happy when our clients work with most animals but some have specific exclusions. Horses and donkeys are a particular concern as their powerful kicks could cause significant harm.
In addition to injury, a key consideration is illness. While most farms open to the public take great care to provide sanitary facilities and provide visitors with sensible procedures and facilities as well as essential animal health monitoring, the risk of the public becoming ill and making an allegation against the farm does exist.
Of course, staff and volunteers may also claim against the charity and as a result, employer liability is an important element of cover.
At Ladbrook, we concentrate on the city farm insurance issues and most of our clients have separate arrangements to cover the vet fees for any animals.