Environmental Liability Insurance
With expanding environmental laws and regulation, coupled with a marked increase in claims, there is a greater need than ever for specialist and comprehensive environmental insurance. Environmental Liability insurance covers the cost of repairing any damage your business causes to water, land, protected plants and animals, or protected plant and animal habitats.
What could happen?
Typically, existing public liability and property damage or business interruption policies have complete exclusions or significant restrictions on coverage for pollution liabilities, especially in respect of gradual pollution, clean-up of your own sites and natural resources damage.
If you are held responsible for pollution or contamination arising from your past, current or future sites or activities, it is likely that you will incur significant uninsured losses. With an environmental liability policy you are insured for the clean-up costs of pollution incidents.
The most common sources of pollution are from fuels and oils, chemicals, sewage, organic and waste materials. The following claim examples highlight the issues that can arise:
• Oil leak – A company was fined as oil was found to be leaking into a stream. The cause was corrosion of an underground pipe, arising from water from a collapsed field drain that hadn’t been checked for several years. The incident cost the company £100,000 to clean up the mess, a fine of £2,000 and costs of £1,245
• Water pollution – A massive fire at chemicals packaging site led to a serious water pollution incident after contaminated firewater entered a local warehouse. During the blaze, people within a 100 metre radius were evacuated due to the thick acrid smoke. The fire was put out with foam and water – contaminated water entered the local watercourse that fed the main river. The clean up costs of £500,000 would not have been covered under a normal Public Liability policy as most policies exclude demands by regulators to pay for clean up and a property policy would not have covered cleaning up the site where contamination occurred
How we can help?
We can help review your risk exposure & source quotations for annually renewable policies or long period policies, depending on circumstances. Longer term policies are ideal in supporting Merger & Acquisition deals or land transactions. We have access to specialist environment insurance including the following areas:
• Operational business environmental liability insurance (various industries including farming, general manufacturing, food processing, chemical storage, waste)
• Environmental site liability (site-specific pollution liability policies)
• Contractors pollution liability (business-wide or project-specific)
• Contaminated land insurance for business and property transactions
• Bespoke policies for (re)development projects
Why customers choose Marlow Gardner & Cooke
We’re not a call centre, we don’t have call queues
You talk to the same people; you know them, they know you
We listen but also ask lots of questions; we tailor your solution around you
We take ownership of problems and respond with solutions
You can be confident your insurance has been set up correctly
You can meet us face to face at our office or on site
Our service includes risk management advice and claims support
01733 328000
insurance@marlowgardner.co.uk
