I’m a newbie here and having found the restart project I’d quite like to get going with something in my local town Crediton, near Exeter in Devon. @james has pointed me at a a proper event he’s going to run in Totnes late in November which I really appreciate, but I’m wondering if I can do something sooner. I’m not imagining anything on a large scale or difficult, just a sort of bootstrap which will hopefully find me some local collaborators.
One of my motives for being local is my wife and I have recently moved here and doing this sort of event seems like a good way of meeting people, as well as fixing stuff and hopefully sharing some expertise, of course.
I get that the events the restart project organises are covered by your liability insurance, and that as a newbie I’m not covered if I organise my own event, and if possible I should try to make use of an existing community organisation’s liability insurance, but if, hypothetically, I did want to run my own event, what are the parameters of the sort of liability insurance I would need? How much liability (how many 0s after the £)? What sorts of terms? Any particular terms to include or avoid? Any particular company/broker knows about providing this sort of insurance for a restart-like event?
I think your best bet would be talking to an insurance agent. While others can give you an idea of what their liability insurance is (which would be helpful to get a rough estimate), an agent would be able to give you a more exact answer. If you can get a liability insurance agreement from a member who has already done an event, that would would help the agent identify what you need covered.
I will ask my wife in the morning what kind of things to consider (she is an insurance agent), but since I am in the USA, I don’t know how much $ would help in a £ economy. There is also a lot of local law to consider. I know my rural community has different regulations than say New York.
Great discussion topic @Ian_Barnard, and exciting to see you’re keen to get something organised soon!
As you mentioned, we highly recommend teaming up with a local, community organisation that already has insurance, as it can be a little complicated to organise it yourself as an individual. I’m sure we could help you find something local to you (e.g. I wonder whether Sustainable Crediton might be a good option?)
Looking ahead slightly, we’re currently working on the issue of insurance and should have some news to share fairly soon - watch this space!
@Ian_Barnard Hello from Glasgow! I project manage Repair Cafe Glasgow. We were set up with lots of help from Jan Dyer at Repair Cafe Malvern Hills (and 4 more in the surrounding areas). She put us in touch with Neil Storer at JST Insurance Services. We have funding for our insurance which includes public liability as well as coverage for our repairers and it is about £450/year. We wouldn’t have it if it weren’t included in our grant funding, so I’m not suggesting you need to have it. Many Repair Cafes, and similar events, limit their liability by requiring a signature on a registration form saying the participant understands that there is no liability for anyone if something should go wrong. We also put it in our house rules on our website: https://www.repaircafeglasgow.org/house-rules.
This info on insurance may also be helpful to anyone else in the repair sector as JST has experience and understands what we’re about.
Hey guys, just to say we have to be a little careful when discussing insurance stuff on this platform for legal reasons (e.g. we can’t give out legal advice etc.)
But, we are preparing some useful info about this, which we’ll be posting in the next week or so. I’ll close this discussion for now, but keep an eye on this category for more news really soon
