IS YOUR FULL TEAM covered?

With an increasing number of salons working with self-employed practitioners, are you fully insured if a client makes a claim? Insurance expert Rosie Barrington explains

The question of insurance often crops up as more salon owners choose to rent out chairs and rooms to hairdressers, nail technicians and beauty therapists on a self-employed basis.

While your responsibilities in respect of employment law are different when you trade this way, you are still responsible for the salon premises as the proprietor and there are some grey areas you need to think about carefully to make sure you are not left uninsured in the event of a claim.

If you own your salon, you need to have an insurance policy that provides cover for your business as a whole. If you rent out chairs or spaces to self-employed therapists, it is important that you make sure they have their own insurance.

The reason for this is that the treatments being carried out by the self-employed therapists working in your salon are not your responsibility. A self-employed therapist has their own responsibility for carrying out a treatment with all due care and consideration. If a claim is made against them by one of their clients, the claim should be dealt with under the self-employed therapist’s insurance policy, not yours.

If, however, you hadn’t checked their insurance and they in fact had none in place, you may be left with a disgruntled customer who could tarnish your salon’s reputation in the event they are unable to make a claim against the therapist. Many clients will only see your salon as the provider of the treatment, regardless of the employment status of your therapists.

Therefore, as a salon owner, it is important that you ensure your self-employed therapists have their own insurance in place. You can then redirect the claim to the therapist’s insurers. It is important for a salon owner to keep copies of the therapist’s insurance documents, especially as a therapist may move to another salon and their clients have up to three years to make an injury claim.

We advise salon owners to ensure they keep copies of all their self-employed therapists’ insurance details and qualification certificates and to make sure these are always up to date.

If a customer of a self-employed therapist, for example, slips over something in the salon’s reception area, then this is the responsibility of the salon owner and any claim will be handled by the salon owner’s insurers.

You can see that there can sometimes be no defined line between what is the responsibility of the salon owner and what is the responsibility of the therapist, so it is important to speak to an insurer who specialises in this type of insurance.

Rosie Barrington is manager at Professional Beauty Direct, which provides full salon insurance packages to cover your liabilities, contents and staff from as little as £156 per year. 0345 605 8670 / professionalbeauty.co.uk/insurance