COVID-19 brought cancellation culture to the fore, so we thought event planners should get their contractual house in order. Heather Stanford, Managing Director of Stanford Gould Solicitors, breaks down what suppliers need to protect themselves.
There are three main elements that you should consider when it comes to your legal responsibility to protect those providing (employees) and using (clients) your products.
Health and Safety Documentation
Ensure that your health and safety documentation is meaningful and regularly reviewed and updated. This is not a tick box, ‘jobsworth’ activity. It might mean someone goes home to their family tonight. Do you have a Health and Safety policy? If you have five or more employees, you must have a written policy. If you have fewer than five employees you do not have to write anything down, but it is still useful to do so.
Look at your operation and practices – both the normal everyday stuff, and the one-off activities for a particular event. Properly assess what you are doing and how you are doing it, to ensure you have identified and where possible reduced the risks of any activity. Write this down!
Evidence based practice in this area is essential. You should complete a Risk Assessment (what are you doing and where?) for the location, its spaces, and your activities, and where necessary a Method Statement (in simple terms the ‘how’ you are doing something) which sits alongside. Review and if necessary, update regularly and evidence this. Take advice from an events H and S specialist and do this properly. Your clients, your staff, your visitors, and your insurers will thank you for it.
Insurance
Legally you are only required to have limited insurance cover for your business, but again, take advice from your broker about the advised correct cover for your activities. Almost all businesses will be advised to take public liability cover to insure for injury or loss based on the activities you undertake as part of your business, or in your spaces.
If you have employees, you must have Employers Liability Insurance to cover them for injury or loss at work. If you have changed what you do in your business – pivoted to a different style or type of service for example – make sure your insurer is aware and that your policy still covers your revised activities. Changes to your delivery need to be reported to your insurer or your broker to make sure your cover is adequate. Remember that your insurance policy conditions are usually a ‘condition precedent’ (they have to be adhered to if the policy is to be valid). So if you want to be paid if you make a claim, know what the conditions are, and make sure they are adhered to.
Contractual terms
There are limitations on the liabilities you can exclude yourself from in a contract, so don’t assume if you exclude and disclaim everything, you will be on safe ground in the event of a problem. Contract law makes certain exclusions of liability – for example for causing death or serious injury by negligence – usually enforceable. Take advice.