Insurance - contracts guidance
Minimum indemnity limits for suppliers
- Public Liability - £5m *any one occurrence
- Employers Liability - £10m any one occurrence
- Professional Indemnity - £1m (where cover is appropriate) any one occurrence
Contracts involving children and vulnerable adults
Where a contract involves services to children and/or young people, the elderly, vulnerable adults, counselling situations etc, an increased limit of indemnity of £10m, any one occurrence with no abuse exclusion/inner limit should be requested in relation to Public Liability insurance.
If you have any specific queries regarding limits of indemnity for contracts then these should be directed to the
Insurance Team.
Contracts involving data handling on our behalf
If a supplier is handling data on our behalf, i.e. as a gcloud solution, hosted service, electronically etc, then the supplier should be requested to have a cyber risk policy with a limit of liability of £5m. This would protect the supplier in the event of a claim from a third party in relation to data breaches/restoration of data etc.
We understand that providers who are data handlers under the gcloud framework have an option to participate in a scheme which includes cyber risk insurance and so, for some suppliers, the provision of this cover would not be an issue.
In practice, any claim following a data breach is likely to be made against Cheshire East. This is because the information belongs to the Council and any person making a claim would not be aware that the service had been outsourced. For this reason the Council are in the process of considering its own position with regard to cyber risk insurance.
Services should note that the terms and conditions of any agreement with suppliers need to be carefully considered:
- is there any mention of the liability position in the event of a data breach
- who would be responsible in the event of a data breach
- is there any mention of restrictions to the supplier’s liability in the event of a breach
In the experience of the Council’s brokers, these Terms and Conditions offer little protection for Councils and they have not seen any provisions for claims made against a Council to be able to be referred on to a supplier.