Typical Risks

Buildings insurance for historic buildings, paying consideration to their material types and the nature of the insurance required (reinstatement / first loss).

Combined Insurance – Policies that cover the wider professional and liability risks of your charity.

Contents Insurance for your Heritage / Listed Building – Including any valuable items such as artwork.

Heritage Building Insurance

Heritage Building Insurance requires specific advice and charities involved in running listed, historic or significant architecture buildings should pay special consideration to their insurance.

Often, heritage buildings are more expensive to repair than their modern counterparts. Materials might be unusual or rare and the building construction project may be more complex, requiring specialist skills. All told, reinstatement may take longer. If your charity is reliant on income from your heritage building, this may be an issue for you.

At Ladbrook Insurance, we are happy to advise you on the types of insurance appropriate for you historic / heritage building.

Marie Hallowes

Operations Director

Charities responsible for organising heritage building insurance should seek specialist advice, we would be delighted to help your group arrange appropriate cover.
Marie Hallowes, Operations Director

Customer Reviews

Charlotte has handled our insurance renewals for nine years now. As a new Charity taking over a Community Library in 2015, it was scary navigating through compliance matter such as insurance. Charlotte steered and helped us through in those early days and has been with us ever since. She is always available; always responds in a timely manner and we never feel any question or query is silly. She is a reassuring presence in our Operation. We feel she goes the extra mile to understand our ever increasing financial and regulatory pressures of an entirely volunteer led Charity.

Margaret Bowler at Markfield Community Library

Claudia Passmore

Friends of Wandon Recreation Park found representatives of Ladbrook Insurance to be very professional, but at the same time extremely helpful and took time in understanding what our insurance needs were and the best policy for us. We would highly recommend Ladbroke Insurance.

Cherry at Friends of Wandon Recreation Park

What a delight to work with Tim and his team. Totally professional, they responded rapidly to an urgent insurance requirement for our club after our previous insurers let us down badly. Tim took a real interest in what we do and came up with an ideal policy at a great price in record time. Thank you!

Roger Stone – Invicta Military Vehicle Preservation Society Ltd

Insurance for Charities with Heritage or Listed Buildings

We are lucky in the UK to have a wide range of listed and heritage properties. These properties often have unique or unusual features or builds and therefore insurance is an important consideration for the charities that look after them. Often the constructions, design and usage of historic buildings makes them expensive to reinstate. Claims can not only be costly but also they can require more time to source the right building materials and skilled labour for reconstruction.

Major losses at heritage buildings do happen, even those sites that employ high levels of security and fire risk management may find themselves subject to catastrophic losses, such as the fire that engulfed Windsor Castle in 1992. Fire is not the only risk, significant buildings may be subject to the risks of terrorism as well as flooding risks. As such, terrorism insurance for historic buildings is an important consideration.

Listed Building Insurance for Charities

Building Insurance for Listed or Heritage Buildings – Cover for the fabric of the building. Ensuring the insurer is aware of the nature of construction, whether the building is listed and the current state of repair and usage of the property. A very important factor in organising heritage building insurance for your charity is ensuring that the sum insured is adequate. If the property is ‘under-insured’ it might lead to the condition of average being applied in a claim which would reduce the insurers obligation to meet any claim in full.

Depending on the profile of the historic building, it might be more appropriate to organise the insurance on a ‘first loss’ basis. This means that you are not insuring the full reinstatement of the building for your charity. this can be appropriate when a total loss would be an extremely unlikely event or the heritage value lost by such a loss might be irreplaceable.

Total reinstatement is essentially cover that seeks to indemnify the insured for the full loss. Int he case of heritage building insurance it means that the sum insured must be able to cover site clearance, planning and full reinstatement to the existing design quality.

Business Interruption – Some charities are reliant on their heritage building for their income. Equally, if you are responsible for a listed or historic site and have a disaster recovery plan, you might find that you need some costs to be insured in the event of a significant claim, perhaps temporary accommodation for example. A further consideration for charities with heritage sites is the length of a potential claim. Often, business interruption policies are written on the basis of providing cover for income and costs only for the first 12 months, this is often very important when considering heritage building insurance.

Engineering Cover – This insurance might be relevant if your heritage or listed property has mechanical plant. This might be a lift but equally could be boilers or other mechanical equipment.

Liability Insurance – If your charity is looking for heritage building insurance, we can arrange this independently or include in a combined policy the liability insurances (public, products and employer liability) appropriate for your group.

Contents Insurance – Often listed buildings have specific contents requirements too. These might be collections, expensive or rare furnishings, artwork or sculptures or more. For charities such as museums or art galleries or any that have extensive specialist contents, we often work with specialist insurers such as Hiscox Insurance or Ecclesiastical. Another consideration would be ‘contents in the open’ considering items that might be outdoors.

The Importance of ‘Getting a Valuation’

Insuring for the correct reinstatement value is an essential element of organising suitable heritage building insurance. The sum insured must include the costs of demolition and site clearance, temporary structures and works, legislative changes that give new obligations, fees and of course construction costs. Depending on location, material type and building design, the construction costs can vary significantly from the building value.

For your charity to gain peace of mind, a professional survey of your heritage property should be arranged from time to time.

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