If your cleaning business employs anyone at all, you almost certainly need employers' liability insurance by law. That covers a full-time supervisor, a weekend window cleaner, your sister who covers the school contract on a Tuesday, and a labour-only subcontractor you pay cash in hand. The Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires most employers carrying on business in Great Britain to hold at least £5 million of cover against injury or illness suffered by employees in the course of their work. In practice, most insurers issue policies with a £10 million limit as standard, because many client contracts ask for it.
The part that trips cleaning companies up is not the £5 million figure. It is the definition of "employee". The law looks at the reality of the working relationship, not the label on the invoice. A self-employed cleaner who turns up when you tell them to, wears your polo shirt, uses your machine and your chemicals and cannot send someone else in their place will usually be treated as your employee for insurance purposes, whatever it says on their tax return. Get that judgement wrong and you can be trading uninsured without realising it.
This guide sets out what the law actually requires, who counts, the penalties for getting it wrong, why insurers ask for your employer reference number, and how the certificate rules work. It is general guidance rather than advice about your specific business. If your staffing arrangements are unusual, talk it through with a broker before you decide you are exempt.
Is employers' liability insurance a legal requirement for a cleaning company?
Yes, for the great majority of cleaning businesses with any kind of workforce. The 1969 Act makes it compulsory to insure against liability for bodily injury or disease sustained by your employees arising out of and in the course of their employment in Great Britain. The minimum limit of indemnity, which is the maximum the insurer will pay for a claim, is £5 million, although you should treat £10 million as the working standard because it is what tenders, facilities management agreements and managing agents routinely specify.
Employers' liability is different from public liability insurance, which covers injury to members of the public and damage to third-party property. Public liability is not compulsory by statute; employers' liability generally is. If you are unclear which does what, our guide on public liability versus employers' liability sets the two side by side.
There are narrow exemptions. The main ones are:
- A limited company with only one employee, where that employee owns 50% or more of the issued share capital. This is the classic one-person cleaning limited company with a sole director and no staff.
- Most unincorporated family businesses where every employee is a close relative of the employer: spouse or civil partner, parent, grandparent, step-parent, child, grandchild, stepchild, brother, sister, half-brother or half-sister. This exemption does not apply to limited companies, so a family-run cleaning Ltd employing a spouse still needs cover.
- Genuinely self-employed people working for themselves with no employees.
Being exempt from the Act is not the same as being safe. If a family member is hurt using your rotary machine, they can still sue, and without a policy you pay the damages and the legal costs personally. Many family cleaning firms buy the cover anyway, and most clients will ask for a certificate regardless of whether you are technically exempt.
Who counts as an employee in a cleaning business?
Insurers and the courts look at the substance of the arrangement. The questions that matter are about control, equipment, materials, payment and substitution. Who decides when and where the work happens? Whose vacuum, ladder and chemicals are used? Are they paid an hourly rate for turning up, or a price for a completed job? Can they send someone else in their place without asking you?
Here is how the common arrangements in cleaning usually fall. Treat it as a guide, not a ruling on your particular set-up.
| Who they are | Typically need employers' liability? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Full-time or part-time PAYE cleaners | Yes | Straightforward employment relationship |
| Casual, weekend or zero-hours cleaners | Yes | Employment status does not depend on hours worked |
| Labour-only subcontractors (you supply kit and chemicals, you direct the work) | Yes, in most cases | Insurers treat them as employees because you control the work |
| Bona fide subcontractors (own insurance, own equipment, own methods, priced work) | Usually no, but you must verify their own cover | They carry their own liability, so evidence it in writing |
| Agency or temp cleaners | Check the agency contract carefully | Responsibility depends on the terms; do not assume |
| Work experience students and trainees | Yes | The Act treats them as employees while on placement |
| Volunteers and unpaid helpers | Often yes, so declare them | Unpaid does not automatically mean uninsured relationship |
| Family members in a limited company | Yes | The family exemption does not extend to limited companies |
The single biggest grey area in our trade is the "self-employed" cleaner who works exclusively for you on your rota. If you would be disappointed rather than indifferent when they sent a stranger to cover their shift, you are probably looking at a labour-only subcontractor. Declare them. The premium difference is far smaller than the cost of an uninsured back injury claim.
What are the penalties for not having employers' liability cover?
The Health and Safety Executive enforces the Act and inspectors can ask to see your certificate at any visit. You can be fined up to £2,500 for each day you are without suitable insurance. You can also be fined up to £1,000 for failing to display the certificate or for refusing to make it available to an inspector who asks.
The fine is rarely the worst of it. The real exposure is the claim itself. Employers' liability claims in cleaning are often not dramatic one-off accidents but slow-burning injuries: a soft tissue back injury from repeatedly lifting a 20kg machine into a van, occupational dermatitis from prolonged contact with degreasers and sanitisers, hand-arm vibration from long shifts on a floor scrubber, or a fractured wrist from a wet stair tread. Damages plus claimant legal costs plus your own defence costs can run well beyond what a small cleaning firm holds in the bank, and a claim can arrive years after the person left your employment. Our guide on the true cost of a claim explains why the headline figure is rarely the whole bill.
Uninsured employers also lose control of the process. With a policy in place, the insurer appoints solicitors, handles correspondence and negotiates. Without one, you are doing all of that yourself while still trying to service contracts.
Your ERN, the certificate and the rules on displaying it
When you apply for cover, the insurer will ask for your employer reference number (ERN), sometimes called your employer PAYE reference. It is the number issued by HMRC when you register as an employer and it appears on P45s, P60s and PAYE correspondence, usually in a format like 123/AB45678.
Insurers are not being nosy. Since 2011, employers' liability insurers have been required to submit policy data, including the ERN, to the Employers' Liability Tracing Office database. That database exists so that a cleaner who develops an industrial disease fifteen years from now can find out who insured their former employer. If you do not have an ERN, for example because every member of staff earns below the PAYE threshold and you are not required to register, say so on the proposal form rather than leaving the field blank.
On certificates, the rules are simpler than many people think:
- Your insurer must issue a certificate of employers' liability insurance showing the limit of indemnity and the period of cover.
- You must display it where employees can read it, or make it available to them electronically. An emailed PDF, a copy in the staff handbook or a link on your team app all satisfy the requirement, provided staff know where to find it and can access it reasonably easily.
- Since 2008 there is no legal obligation to keep certificates for 40 years, but the HSE strongly advises retaining a record of who insured you and when. Disease claims can surface decades later, and a saved PDF costs nothing.
Keep a simple insurance history file: insurer name, policy number, limit and dates for every year you have traded with staff. If you ever face a late-notified claim, that file is what lets your broker find the right insurer.
What employers' liability actually covers for cleaning staff
The policy responds when an employee alleges that their injury or illness was caused by your negligence or breach of statutory duty. It pays compensation awarded to them and the legal costs of defending the claim, up to the limit of indemnity.
Typical cleaning scenarios include:
- A cleaner slips on a stairwell she has just mopped in an office block and fractures an elbow, alleging no wet floor signs were provided.
- An operative falls from a step ladder while reaching to clean a high-level light fitting that should have been done from a platform.
- A team member suffers chemical burns after decanting an acidic washroom cleaner into an unlabelled bottle, a classic COSHH failure.
- A window cleaner sustains a shoulder injury from repeated pole work, alleging no job rotation or training was provided.
- A deep cleaning operative develops respiratory symptoms after working in an unventilated plant room.
What it does not cover is equally important. It is not health insurance and it does not pay out simply because someone was hurt at work; there must be legal liability. It does not cover damage to a client's property. That sits with public liability and, for the surfaces and items you are actually working on, with treatment risk cover. It does not cover theft of your machines, which is tools and equipment insurance, nor the cost of replacing a client's locks after a lost fob, which is loss of keys cover.
If you employ staff, you can usually place employers' liability alongside your other covers in one package. Our employers' liability page for cleaning companies sets out how it sits within a wider policy, and you can start a quote through the employers' liability enquiry form in a few minutes.
What insurers ask a cleaning company, and why the answers matter
Under the Insurance Act 2015, commercial customers owe a duty of fair presentation of risk. In plain terms, you must tell the insurer everything a prudent underwriter would want to know, in a clear and accessible way, before the policy starts and at each renewal. Get it wrong and the insurer may be entitled to reduce a claim payment, apply different terms retrospectively or, if the misrepresentation was deliberate or reckless, avoid the policy altogether.
For employers' liability, the questions usually cover:
- Estimated annual wage roll, split by type of work. Office cleaning, window cleaning at height and industrial deep cleaning are rated differently. Include labour-only subcontractor payments, which most insurers ask for separately.
- Number of employees, including part-time and casual staff.
- Height of work. Do your window cleaners use ladders, water-fed poles, cradles or MEWPs? What is the maximum working height? See our window cleaners insurance page for how this is rated.
- Type of premises worked in. Offices and schools sit differently to food production, hospitals or industrial plant.
- Specialist activities such as biohazard, trauma or void property work, which fall under specialist and deep cleaning insurance.
- Claims history for the last three to five years, including incidents reported but not yet settled.
- Health and safety arrangements: risk assessments, COSHH assessments, training records, lone working procedures.
Wage roll estimates are usually adjusted at the end of the policy year. If you win a large contract mid-term and double your headcount, tell your broker at the time rather than waiting for renewal. An honest mid-term adjustment is routine; a surprise at audit is not.
Because our questionnaire at Polished Insurance is built for cleaning businesses, it asks about pole heights, chemical use, key holding and subcontractors rather than generic trade questions that do not apply to you.
Subcontractors, tenders and the paperwork clients ask for
Larger cleaning firms often run a mixed model: employed core staff plus subcontractors for cover and overflow. Two rules keep you out of trouble. First, if a subcontractor works under your direction with your equipment, declare them as labour-only and include their payments in your wage roll. Second, if you use genuine subcontractors with their own businesses, collect and diary their insurance certificates, both public liability and employers' liability if they have staff of their own, then check the renewal dates. A certificate that expired four months ago is worth nothing if their operative is injured on your site.
Contract and commercial tenders almost always specify minimum limits, commonly £10 million employers' liability and £5 million public liability, sometimes more for NHS, education or local authority work. Read the schedule of insurance requirements before you price the job, because upgrading limits mid-tender is easier than explaining a shortfall after award. Our pages on contract cleaners insurance and commercial and office cleaning insurance cover the combinations that tenders typically ask for, and you can request quotes for either through the contract cleaning enquiry form.
Where you hold client keys or alarm codes, expect additional questions about storage and accountability. Our guide to keyholding risks explains what good practice looks like.
A practical checklist for this week
- List everyone who does work for your business, including casuals, family members, trainees and subcontractors. Next to each name, note who supplies the equipment and who directs the work.
- Decide, honestly, which of them are labour-only. If you are unsure about one, treat them as labour-only and declare them.
- Find your ERN on a P60 or PAYE letter and save it somewhere you can reach quickly.
- Check your current certificate: is the limit at least £5 million, does the period cover today, and is the insured name exactly the same as your trading entity?
- Display the certificate on a noticeboard, in a pinned staff WhatsApp message or in the handbook, and tell your team where it is.
- Collect current insurance certificates from every bona fide subcontractor and put their expiry dates in your calendar.
- Check that your written risk assessments are current. If you have five or more employees, the significant findings must be recorded in writing.
- Review your COSHH sheets and confirm that every chemical in every van is in a labelled container with the correct dilution instructions.
- Confirm your wage roll estimate still matches reality. If you have grown, tell your broker.
- Save a copy of every past employers' liability certificate in a dated folder so you can trace old insurers if a late claim appears.
Reducing the chance of a claim in the first place
Insurers price on exposure and on how well you manage it. The controls that matter most in cleaning are unglamorous and cheap: wet floor signs carried in every kit bag and actually used; a rule that nobody works above shoulder height from a stool or chair; correct ladder training or, better, water-fed poles for anything routine; trolleys and lifting aids so operatives are not carrying machines down stairs; gloves and eye protection stored with the chemicals rather than in the van; and a lone working check-in for evening cleans in empty buildings.
Record the training. A signed induction sheet showing that an operative was shown how to dilute a product and where the safety data sheets are kept is one of the most useful documents you can produce when a claim lands two years later. The same discipline helps with client-side incidents too. Our guide on handling accidental damage walks through what to record at the time and why it matters. If you are still weighing up which covers your business genuinely needs, start with do I really need insurance for my cleaning business, or browse all our cleaning insurance guides.
Getting employers' liability cover in place
If you have taken on your first member of staff, or you have realised that the "self-employed" cleaner on your rota is really a labour-only subcontractor, put cover in place before the next shift rather than at the next renewal. Cover is subject to the policy wording, the insurer's acceptance and your circumstances, so the sensible step is a short conversation rather than a guess.
You can tell us about your team, your wage roll and the type of work you do through the employers' liability insurance enquiry form, or see the full range of covers on our cleaning insurance hub. If you would rather talk through an unusual staffing arrangement first, use the general enquiry form and we will come back to you.