Every exterior cleaning business in Sydney advertises a public liability figure. Ten million, twenty million. The number is the least informative part of the document.
The figure is a ceiling, not a description of what is covered. What matters is the exclusions, and almost nobody reads them — including, in our experience, some of the operators holding the policy.
We carry $20m public liability. Here is an honest account of what that does and does not do for you.
What public liability is for
It responds to injury to other people and damage to other people’s property, caused by the business in the course of its work.
If a lance goes through a window, if a ladder comes down on a car, if a pedestrian is hurt by something falling, if overspray takes the paint off a neighbour’s vehicle — that is the territory. It is also what strata committees and commercial clients are actually checking for when they ask for a certificate.
Gap one: it is not insurance for the workers
Public liability does not cover the operator’s own staff. Employee injury is workers compensation, which in NSW is compulsory for employers and is a separate policy entirely.
This matters to you more than it sounds. If an uninsured worker is injured on your roof, the question of who carries that liability becomes a conversation involving your home insurance.
So there are two questions, not one: public liability, and workers compensation if anyone other than the owner is on site. A sole trader working alone has no workers compensation obligation, which is a legitimate answer — but then nobody else should be turning up. More: what to check before anyone gets on your roof.
Gap two: care, custody and control
This is the exclusion that catches people, and it is in most policies in some form.
Public liability covers damage to third party property. But the thing being worked on is often treated as being in the contractor’s care, custody or control — and damage to it may be excluded or limited, precisely because it is the subject of the work rather than a bystander to it.
Put plainly: a policy might comfortably cover the neighbour’s window and be far less helpful about the roof the operator was standing on. Some policies carry a limited extension for this. Many do not.
This is the single best question to ask: does your cover extend to the property you are working on, and to what limit.
Gap three: faulty workmanship is not damage
Liability insurance covers damage. It generally does not cover the cost of redoing work that was done badly.
If a sealer is applied over a stain and has to be stripped and redone, that is a workmanship failure, and the remedy comes from the operator’s own pocket and from your consumer guarantees — not from their insurer. An operator with no money behind them and a beautiful certificate is still a problem.
More: what a guarantee can honestly promise.
Gap four: the activity exclusions
Policies are written against a declared business activity, and they commonly exclude things.
Work above a stated height is a frequent one — a policy written for general cleaning may exclude work above two or three storeys, which quietly voids cover on exactly the jobs where the risk lives. Asbestos is almost universally excluded, which is one reason nobody reputable goes near damaged fibro. Hot works, height access equipment and work over water sometimes carry their own carve-outs.
If a policy excludes work at height and someone is on your two-storey roof, the certificate on the wall is decorative. More: fibro and asbestos and working over water.
Gap five: subcontractors
If the business you hired subcontracts the work, the subcontractor needs their own cover. Many policies do not extend to subcontractors as insureds, or require them to hold equivalent cover as a condition.
So ask who is actually turning up. If the answer is a crew from another business, you want their certificate too.
How to check a certificate properly
Ask for a certificate of currency, not a screenshot. It should show the insured entity name, the ABN, the policy number, the period of cover, the limit and the business activity described.
Three things to verify. First, the entity name on the certificate matches the entity on the quote and the invoice — different trading names are extremely common and a mismatch means the cover may not attach to the contracting party. Second, the period covers your job date, not last year. Third, the described activity matches the work. A certificate describing general cleaning services is not a certificate for roof work.
The ABN is checkable in thirty seconds on the ABN Lookup register. If the business was registered three weeks ago, that is worth knowing.
Why we send it before the job rather than on request
The certificate, the method statement and the safety data sheets for anything being applied should arrive before work starts, not after someone asks.
An operator who has to go looking for their certificate of currency is telling you how often anybody checks. More: the paperwork you should get before work starts.
And the thing insurance cannot do
It pays after the event. It does not restore an etched sandstone balustrade, a coated roof tile, or a heritage lime mortar joint, because those are not replaceable with money in any way that satisfies anyone.
Which is the argument for method over cover. The certificate matters. Not needing it matters more. More: what high pressure does to sandstone.
