ARE YOU ORGANISING AN EVENT?

Posts Tagged ‘business insurance’

ARE YOU ORGANISING AN EVENT?

Friday, August 13th, 2010

Its Summer and your business or organisation may be involved with the organising of an event, but have you considered the risks involved?

It is important that you manage the additional liability risks involved in organising an outdoor event.

AVIVA have released a timely simple guidance document, to help you through the steps you need to take.

As part of its ‘Simply Safety’ campaign, insurance provider Aviva is emphasizing that proper planning and risk assessment of such events as fêtes, carnivals and parades are crucial to ensure that the organisers don’t incur additional liability and a fun and safe time is had by all.

Phil Grace, liability risk manager at Aviva, had the following advice for event organisers:

“Sketch a plan of the site showing the position of the activities, the entrance and exit routes, and car parking. This will be useful in explaining how the event will be organised.

“A risk assessment should always be undertaken in advance to properly assess the additional risks. The assessment should include identification of all possible hazards that could occur and also include how the risk will be controlled. Event organisers should also request risk assessments from third parties such as contractors and participants and, where appropriate, method statements for the activities they will carry out.” 

In particular, event organisers should consider:

  • Stands and stalls
  • Marquees, stages and caterers’ stands/tents
  • Bouncy castles and amusement rides
  • Control of people and vehicles

Grace also pointed out that contingency planning is just as important as risk assessment and advised event organisers to consider what could go wrong on the day and draw up a plan to deal with such emergencies as a fire, bomb alert and adverse weather conditions.

You can download it from here

 https://help.aviva.co.uk/resources/avivabroker/tools-and-templates/Simply_Safety_Events_July_2010

Ministry of Justice (MOJ) Reforms Guidance Document

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) are introducing a new insurance claims handling procedure from the 30th April 2010, and this places various statutory obligations upon lawyers and insurers. We have produced this newsletter to help you understand how the new process will operate and what this means. The MoJ has decided that lower cost motor personal injury claims generally take too long to settle and claimant lawyers fees are too high and disproportionate to the level of compensation (Damages) The process shown in the diagram applies to third party personal injury claims arising from road accidents happening on or after April 30th 2010, in England or Wales, if the estimated value of the claim is between £1,000 (Small Claims Court) and £10,000, excluding vehicle damage and hire.

It does not apply if either vehicle is registered outside the UK.

 cowens-moj-guidance-doc-2010

General Points

  • Once liability is admitted at stage 1, it is binding on the insurer throughout the process.
  • Admitting liability, before the start of the process, is not binding. This arises if a non injury claim is already progressing for, e.g. vehicle damage or hire.
  • Admitting liability for the accident does not prevent an insurer from raising fraud issues.
  • Stage 3 costs are much lower than legal proceedings outside of the process.
  • If a claim leaves the process, it cannot reenter under any circumstances.
  • Insurers will wish to keep as many third party claims as possible within the process.
  • As the Motor Insurance Database (MID) will be used to help identify the relevant insurer, it is important to maintain this on an up to date basis.
  • If the MID is wrong, by the time your insurer receives the third party notification claim, it may be too late get the case into the new process.
  • If you want any further information or help please contact your claims handler.