Your renewal invitation lands, the premium is a bit higher than last year, and the easiest thing to do is pay it. Plenty of cleaning companies do exactly that for three or four years running, then discover at claim stage that the turnover figure on the schedule relates to a business half the size, or that a contract they won in March needs a £10 million public liability limit while the policy still shows £5 million. A proper cleaning insurance renewal takes about an hour of preparation and fixes both problems before they cost you anything.
The short answer to what you should review: turnover and wageroll for the coming year, any new services or sites you have taken on, your liability limits against what your contracts now demand, sums insured for equipment and stock, your claims and incidents from the past twelve months, and anything that has changed about who does the work (employees, self-employed cleaners, franchisees, labour-only subcontractors). Those six things drive almost every pricing decision an insurer makes on a cleaning risk, and almost every coverage dispute.
This guide walks through each one in the order an underwriter would look at it, with the questions they actually ask. It applies whether you run a two-van domestic round or a contract cleaning company with forty staff across a dozen buildings. General guidance only, of course. What your own policy covers depends on its wording, your circumstances and insurer acceptance.
When should you start your cleaning insurance renewal?
Four to six weeks before the renewal date is sensible. Insurers and brokers usually issue renewal terms around 21 to 30 days ahead, and that notice period exists so you have time to question the terms rather than rubber-stamp them.
Starting early matters more than people expect in cleaning. If you have moved into areas such as high-level window cleaning, builders cleans or biohazard work, the market for that risk is narrower and placing it takes longer than a straight office cleaning renewal. Leaving it to the last three days usually means you renew as-is and promise yourself you will sort it properly next year.
Diarise two dates: one six weeks out to gather your figures, and one two weeks out to make a decision. If your policy renews on a continuous or auto-renewal basis, check how much notice you need to give if you decide to move. Also check whether your card details are stored for an automatic payment, because an unwanted auto-renewal is an awkward conversation to unwind.
Declaring turnover and wages correctly
Turnover and wageroll are the two numbers most cleaning policies are rated on. Public liability tends to be priced against turnover (or sometimes against the number of cleaners). Employers' liability is priced against wages, usually split between clerical or managerial staff and manual cleaning staff, because a supervisor in an office carries a different injury risk from an operative on a mop.
Insurers ask for an estimate for the year ahead, not last year's accounts. If you won a contract worth £90,000 a year in August, your estimate for the coming twelve months should include a full year of it. Understating the figure is not a saving. Many policies contain an adjustable premium clause, meaning the insurer can ask for a declaration at the end of the period and charge the difference. More seriously, a large gap between declared and actual turnover can be treated as a failure to present the risk fairly, which gives the insurer options at claim stage.
Get the definitions right before you fill anything in:
- Turnover normally means gross income from cleaning activities before expenses, not profit, and not the figure after subcontractor costs.
- Wageroll normally means gross wages including employer's National Insurance treatment as your insurer defines it. Ask rather than guess, and keep the basis consistent year to year.
- Payments to self-employed cleaners and labour-only subcontractors often need declaring separately. Where you supply the materials and control the work, insurers frequently treat those people as employees for rating and for employers' liability purposes. Our guide to labour-only subcontractors and your cleaning insurance explains the distinction in detail.
If you are near the £5 million statutory minimum question, remember that employers' liability cover is a legal requirement under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 for almost all businesses with employees, with a minimum limit of £5 million. The HSE can fine a business up to £2,500 for each day it trades uninsured. Renewal is the right moment to check whether anyone you treat as self-employed actually falls inside that definition, and our page on employers' liability insurance for cleaning companies sets out how the cover works.
Have your activities changed in the past twelve months?
Cleaning businesses drift. A domestic round adds end of tenancy jobs because the local letting agent asked. An office contractor agrees to take on the car park jet wash. A carpet cleaner buys a soft wash kit and starts doing render. Each of those changes the risk, and the policy description of your trade may no longer match what your vans do on a Tuesday.
Run through this list and be honest about anything you have done, even once:
- Working at height above ground floor, reach-and-wash pole heights, use of ladders, cradles, MEWPs or rope access
- Pressure washing, roof cleaning, soft washing and any work involving chemical runoff into drains or neighbouring property
- Hot works, fire or flood restoration, void property cleans, needle or sharps removal, trauma and biohazard cleaning
- Builders cleans and any work on a live construction site, which usually brings site rules and higher indemnity requirements
- Carpet, upholstery or hard floor treatments, where damage to the item you are working on falls under treatment risk rather than ordinary public liability
- Key holding, alarm response and out-of-hours access to client premises
- Supplying consumables, hiring out machines, or providing staff to work under a client's supervision
Anything ticked that is not already on your schedule needs declaring. The cost of adding an activity at renewal is usually modest. The cost of discovering it was excluded after a claim is not, as our guide on the true cost of a cleaning claim sets out.
Geography counts too. If you have started working in Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, or offshore, or sending staff abroad, say so. Territorial limits are easy to overlook.
Are your liability limits still right for your contracts?
Most cleaning policies start at £1 million or £2 million public liability. Managing agents, local authorities, NHS trusts, schools and large facilities management firms frequently specify £5 million or £10 million, and some tenders also require a minimum professional indemnity limit where you are giving advice, writing specifications or managing other suppliers.
Pull out every contract and tender document you signed in the past year and check the insurance clause. Look for four things: the required limit, whether it is required per claim or in the aggregate, whether you must name the client as an additional insured or note their interest, and whether there is an indemnity or hold-harmless clause that goes further than ordinary common law liability. That last one matters because policies often exclude liability assumed under contract that you would not have had otherwise.
Our guide to public liability limits for cleaning contracts covers how to read those clauses. If you have a tender submission due in the next few months, it is usually cheaper to increase the limit at renewal than to mid-term adjust it under deadline pressure.
Do not forget the limits inside sections rather than the headline figure:
| Section | What to re-check at renewal | Common gap |
|---|---|---|
| Public liability | Limit per claim, excess, and whether damage to property worked upon is included | A £250 excess that is now £1,000, applied per claim |
| Employers' liability | £10 million standard limit, wageroll estimate, self-employed cleaners included | Agency or subcontract labour not declared |
| Treatment risk | Sub-limit for damage to the carpet, oven, render or floor being cleaned | Sub-limit far below the value of a single job |
| Loss of keys | Lock replacement and security costs following loss of client keys or fobs | Limit set years ago, now too low for a multi-site electronic access system |
| Tools and equipment | Sum insured, van overnight conditions, cover away from premises | New machines bought in-year and never added |
| Money and fidelity | Cover for theft by employees from client premises | No fidelity section at all despite holding keys |
Treatment risk is the one that catches carpet, oven and pressure washing businesses out most often. Standard public liability covers damage to other property, so if the carpet shrinks or the aluminium window frame hazes, the item you were paid to clean may sit outside the cover unless the policy specifically extends to it. The treatment risk guide explains how the gap arises.
Equipment, keys and sums insured that drift out of date
Equipment schedules age badly. Most cleaning companies buy a machine or two every year, a rotary, a new wet vac, a scrubber dryer, a hot water pressure washer, then never update the sum insured. If you are insured for £8,000 of kit and you now have £19,000 in the van, an average clause may reduce a partial loss claim in proportion to the shortfall.
Walk the van and the store with a notepad. List every item over about £250, note replacement cost rather than what you paid, and add the total up. Then check the conditions attached to the section: many policies require tools to be removed from a vehicle overnight, or kept in a locked compartment, or insist the van is in a locked garage between certain hours. Those conditions are common and enforceable, and they are worth reading again before you renew the tools and equipment cover.
Keys deserve their own five minutes. Count how many client properties you hold keys, fobs or access codes for, and ask what it would cost if a bunch went missing from an office with an electronic access control system. Replacement locks for one flat is one number. Reprogramming a commercial building is another entirely. Our loss of keys insurance page and the keyholding risks guide both cover how limits are structured.
Where staff work unsupervised in client premises, consider whether a fidelity guarantee section should be added or increased. Clients increasingly ask about it during tenders, and the fidelity guarantee guide explains what it responds to.
Reviewing claims, incidents and near misses
Your insurer will ask for claims experience, usually three to five years. Before you answer, check your own records rather than relying on memory. Notified incidents that never became claims still need declaring in most cases, because the question is normally phrased around claims and circumstances that might give rise to a claim.
Gather, for each incident: the date, what happened, the client, the amount paid or reserved, and what you changed afterwards. That last column is the useful one. An underwriter looking at two slip claims in eighteen months will price differently if you can show you moved to a wet floor sign policy with photographic sign-off, retrained staff on spill procedure and changed your floor pads. Risk improvements are the strongest argument you have at renewal, and they cost nothing to document.
Also think about circumstances you have not reported. A tenant complained about a scratched worktop after an end of tenancy clean and you paid £180 out of your own pocket. A client emailed about a damaged blind. Those may need disclosing even though no claim was made. If you are unsure, tell your broker and let them judge. Our walkthrough on handling accidental damage covers what to record at the time.
The duty of fair presentation at renewal
Commercial insurance in the UK is governed by the Insurance Act 2015. As a business customer you owe a duty of fair presentation: you must disclose every material circumstance you know, or ought to know after a reasonable search of information available to you, in a way that a prudent underwriter can understand. The duty applies at renewal as well as at inception, not only when something has changed.
In practice, a reasonable search means asking the people who would know. If you have supervisors, ask whether anything happened on their sites. If a manager quietly settled a damaged laptop with a client, that is information your business holds, whether or not it reached your desk.
Get this wrong and the consequences depend on what would have happened had the insurer known. The insurer might have declined the risk, charged more, or imposed different terms, and the remedies under the Act follow accordingly, including proportionate reduction of a claim payment. Deliberate or reckless misrepresentation sits in a worse category again. None of this is designed to catch out an honest cleaning company. It does mean the renewal form deserves more than a two-minute skim.
Your cleaning insurance renewal checklist
Work through this in the order given and you will have everything a broker needs in one go.
- Six weeks out: diarise the renewal date, confirm whether the policy auto-renews, and note the notice period.
- Turnover: estimate gross income for the coming twelve months, including a full year of any contract won part-way through last year.
- Wages: split manual and clerical gross wages, and list payments to self-employed cleaners and labour-only subcontractors separately.
- Headcount: number of employees, part-timers, agency staff, family members working in the business and anyone on a zero-hours arrangement.
- Activities: list every service you now offer, including one-off jobs, and flag height work, pressure washing, treatment work, biohazard and builders cleans.
- Sites: note any unusual premises types you now clean, such as schools, healthcare settings, food production, industrial units or construction sites.
- Contracts: pull the insurance clause from every agreement signed in the past year and record required limits and any additional insured wording.
- Limits: check public liability, employers' liability, professional indemnity if held, and all sub-limits including treatment risk, keys and equipment.
- Excesses: confirm the amount and whether it applies per claim or per event.
- Equipment: recount the sum insured at replacement cost and read the van and storage conditions.
- Claims: list every claim and notified circumstance for the past five years with outcomes and the improvements you made.
- Documents: update your risk assessments, method statements, COSHH assessments and training records, since clients and underwriters both ask for them.
- Own premises: if you have an office, store or unit, review buildings, contents, stock and business interruption figures.
- Decision: two weeks out, compare terms properly on cover as well as price, then confirm.
If the COSHH records are the weak point, our plain English COSHH guide is a quick refresher before you tidy the file.
Comparing renewal terms without comparing apples and pears
A lower premium that strips out damage to property worked upon, raises the excess from £250 to £1,000 and cuts the keys limit by two-thirds is not a saving. When you put alternatives side by side, line up the sections rather than the headline numbers.
Things worth asking about any alternative quote:
- Is the public liability limit per claim or in the aggregate for the period?
- What is the excess, and does it apply to damage claims, injury claims or both?
- Is damage to property being worked upon included, and at what sub-limit?
- Are height restrictions, depth restrictions or heat work conditions attached?
- Does the policy cover work on construction sites, in occupied healthcare settings or in food premises if you do that work?
- Are self-employed cleaners covered, and under which section?
- If professional indemnity is included, what is the retroactive date, meaning the earliest date of work the policy will respond to? Moving insurer can reset it and leave past work uncovered.
That last point matters for any cleaning or facilities business giving advice, writing specifications or supervising other contractors. The professional indemnity page explains how claims-made cover behaves when you change insurer.
A specialist broker should be doing this comparison for you and showing their working. Our questionnaire only asks the questions that actually apply to cleaning businesses, which is why most clients can give us a full picture of the year ahead in a few minutes rather than wrestling with a generic trades form. Start a contract cleaners insurance review and we will quote against the figures you have just gathered.
Renewal by business type: what to look at first
The checklist is the same for everyone, but the pressure points differ.
- Window cleaners: maximum working height, ladder versus pole, any internal or cradle work. See window cleaners insurance.
- Domestic cleaners: number of cleaners, keys held, accidental damage limits in occupied homes. See domestic cleaners insurance.
- Carpet and upholstery: treatment risk sub-limit against the value of a single rug or suite, plus water damage from machines.
- Pressure washing: surface types, runoff, roof work and whether soft washing chemicals are declared. See pressure washing insurance.
- End of tenancy: volume of jobs, deposit disputes and the short window between tenancies.
- Office and contract cleaners: out-of-hours access, alarm codes, staff numbers and client contract wording, covered in the out-of-hours access guide.
Whichever description fits, the full range sits on our cleaning insurance hub, and the section-by-section breakdown of contract cleaners insurance is useful if you want to understand what each part of your schedule is actually for.
Getting your renewal quoted
Renewal is the only point in the year where you can change limits, add sections and correct declarations without arguing about a mid-term adjustment. An hour spent on the figures above puts you in a much stronger position, whether you stay where you are or move.
If you would like us to review your current schedule against the business you run now, send it over with your updated turnover and wage estimates and we will tell you plainly where the gaps are. You can start with a contract cleaners insurance quote, or use the general enquiry form if you are not sure which description fits. Cover, terms and premium always depend on the policy wording, your circumstances and insurer acceptance, and this guide is general information rather than advice for your particular business.