Liability Compulsory Insurance premiums soar

The spiralling cost of unreasonable Employees' Liability Compulsory Insurance is crippling UK business, says Lifting Solutions, which has seen its projected liability insurance costs double.

The spiralling cost of unreasonable Employees' Liability Compulsory Insurance (ELCI) is crippling UK business, according to Managing Director of Barnsley-based Lifting Solutions, who has seen its projected liability insurance costs more than double from GBP 21,000 per annum to a staggering GBP 40,000-plus.

(The company is a relatively small business, with in the region of 30 staff).

The huge increase in ELCI is being imposed despite Lifting Solutions only having made a few small claims in the past years - a couple of small claims for Vibration White Finger (a pre-existing medical condition of former-miners) and one other small claim for a broken finger.

In the eyes of the insurer, claims amounting to no more than a couple of thousand pounds have rendered Lifting Solutions almost uninsurable, even though their annual policy is GBP 21,000 and has always been paid on time.

"It's quite outrageous that we are being made to pay such a heavy price for a few small claims that we were in no way responsible for as a company", said Moorhouse.

And this is not sour grapes; reasonable policy increases are understandable but quite frankly, the recent increases in ELCI are down to the new 'ambulance chasing' culture and the fact that the insurers are trying to cover losses made elsewhere.

Someone is profiteering, and it's not the small businesses like ourselves who are once again being made to subsidise the insurance companies' annual profits.

Insurance premiums have always been based on actual risk, and that's all we ask - to be treated fairly and charged according to the actual risk associated with our business.

Moorhouse is now calling for a national review of Insurers' ELCI premiums.

"I would urge any other business affected by these impossible insurance increases to write to their Member of Parliament (MP) and use whatever other means of communication at their disposal to raise the profile of this issue.

This problem will probably not go away without direct intervention from the Government; premiums will simply continue to escalate as ambulance chasing firms increase the number of claims, and insurers constantly look at new ways of covering their losses by punishing small business.

Moorhouse has himself written to local Barnsley MP Michael Clapham expressing his concerns.

Clapham has in turn lobbied Lifting Solutions' corporate insurer on Moorhouse's behalf - so far without a satisfactory explanation as to the enormous hike in premiums.

The UK Government is already aware of such problems, having published a Second Stage Ministerial Foreword on the subject.

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