If you buy insurance for your cleaning business, you are a commercial customer, and that means you carry a legal duty called the duty of fair presentation. It comes from the Insurance Act 2015 and it says you must tell the insurer every material circumstance you know, or ought to know, about your business, and present it in a clear and accessible way. A material circumstance is simply anything that would influence a careful insurer's decision to offer cover, set a premium or impose conditions.
In plain terms: before the insurer agrees to cover you, they need an honest picture of what you actually do. Not what you did three years ago when you started, and not a tidied-up version that leaves out the roof cleaning, the two self-employed cleaners you use on Saturdays, or the £4,000 claim from last winter. Get this right and a claim is far more likely to be paid without argument. Get it wrong and the insurer has remedies ranging from reducing the payout to voiding the policy entirely.
This guide explains what counts as material for a cleaning business specifically, who in your company counts as "you" for disclosure purposes, what the insurer can do if the presentation was unfair, and a practical checklist you can work through before you next renew. It is general guidance rather than advice about your own policy, so talk to a broker about anything that applies to your particular setup.
What does the Insurance Act 2015 actually require?
The Act replaced the older, harsher regime that let insurers avoid a policy for almost any non-disclosure, however innocent. In its place sits a more balanced arrangement. You must disclose every material circumstance you know or ought to know. If you do not do that, you must at least give the insurer enough information to put a prudent underwriter on notice that it needs to ask more questions.
Three parts matter for a cleaning firm:
- Disclosure. Material facts must be told to the insurer, whether or not a question is asked about them.
- Reasonable search. You are expected to make a reasonable search of the information available to you, including information held by people in your business and, in some cases, by others such as your subcontractors or your broker.
- Clear and accessible presentation. Burying a key fact in a 40-page appendix is not a fair presentation. Neither is a data dump of unsorted documents.
The duty applies at the start of a policy, at every renewal and whenever you ask for a mid-term change such as adding a new activity or a new address. You can read the legislation itself on legislation.gov.uk if you want the exact wording.
What counts as a material fact for a cleaning business?
Underwriters price cleaning risks on the shape of the work, not the job title. Two businesses both calling themselves "commercial cleaners" can present wildly different exposures: one does daytime office vacuuming, the other does abseil facade cleaning on a hospital. The facts below are the ones that routinely change a quote.
| Area | What insurers want to know | Why it changes the risk |
|---|---|---|
| Activities | Every service you offer, including occasional ones | Jet washing, roof work, biohazard and builders cleans sit in different risk bands |
| Working at height | Maximum height, ladders, poles, towers, MEWPs, cradles, rope access | Falls drive the most severe injury claims in the trade |
| Premises type | Offices, schools, hospitals, food production, data centres, industrial plant | High-value or sensitive sites raise the potential damage figure sharply |
| Staffing | Employees, labour-only subcontractors, bona fide subcontractors, family members, volunteers | Determines Employers' Liability need and how liability flows |
| Turnover and wages | Estimated annual turnover and wageroll split by activity | These are the rating bases for most liability policies |
| Claims and incidents | Claims, notified circumstances and incidents in the last five years | Past losses are the strongest predictor of future ones |
| Keys and alarms | Keyholding, fobs, alarm codes, out-of-hours access | Lock replacement and security costs can run high |
| Chemicals and equipment | Caustics, dip tanks, steam, heat, hot works | Burns, fumes and fire exposure need specific terms |
| Directors' history | Insolvency, unspent convictions, previous policies declined or cancelled | Standard moral hazard questions on almost every proposal |
Activities you may not think to mention
The most common non-disclosure we see is the sideline. A domestic cleaning round that also does three gutter clears a month. An office cleaning contract where the team occasionally climbs on a flat roof to clean skylights. An end of tenancy firm that started taking carpets on because a landlord asked. A commercial cleaning policy rated for interior work does not automatically extend to roof cleaning or to the treatment risk that comes with applying chemicals to a customer's carpet or stonework.
If it earns you money and you would do it again, disclose it. Even if it is five per cent of turnover. Even if it is seasonal.
Who counts as "you" when making a fair presentation?
The Act expects knowledge from senior management and from the people responsible for arranging your insurance. In a limited company that usually means the directors and whoever handles the renewal paperwork. It also means you cannot avoid the duty by deliberately not asking.
The "ought to know" part catches information a reasonable search would have found. If your supervisor knew that a cleaner reported a back injury in March and you never asked, the insurer may still treat that as something you ought to have known. A practical answer is a short internal sweep before each renewal: ask supervisors and account managers whether anything happened on their sites that could lead to a claim, and write down the answers.
Subcontractors and franchise networks
If you use labour-only subcontractors, people you direct and supervise like staff but who invoice you, that needs stating clearly. Insurers treat them differently from bona fide subcontractors who run their own businesses and carry their own public liability. Mixing the two up in a proposal form is a classic source of dispute after a claim. Franchisees should disclose the franchise arrangement, who sets the method statements, and whether the franchisor's master policy covers any part of the work.
Claims history: the fact people most often get wrong
Most proposal forms ask for claims or losses over the past three or five years, whether or not they were insured and whether or not they were paid. That wording matters. Many cleaning firms settle small breakages out of their own pocket to keep the client happy, then tick "no claims" at renewal. Strictly, an incident you paid for yourself can still be a material circumstance if the question asks about losses, and a notified circumstance that never turned into a claim usually has to be declared too.
A realistic example. A cleaner knocks a client's monitor off a desk in November. You replace it for a few hundred pounds without telling the insurer. In February a different cleaner on the same contract floods a server cupboard by leaving a tap running. The insurer investigates, finds correspondence about the November incident, and asks why it was never declared at the January renewal. Now you are arguing about disclosure at the exact moment you need the policy to work. The full cost of a claim is rarely just the item you broke.
Declare the lot. Small, paid-by-you incidents rarely change a quote much on their own. Hidden ones can cost you the claim.
What happens if the presentation is not fair?
The Act sets out proportionate remedies, and the outcome depends on whether the breach was deliberate or reckless, and on what the insurer would have done had it known the truth.
| Situation | Typical insurer remedy |
|---|---|
| Deliberate or reckless breach | Insurer may avoid the policy, refuse all claims and keep the premium |
| Careless breach, insurer would have declined the risk | Insurer may avoid the policy and refuse claims, but returns the premium |
| Careless breach, insurer would have charged more | Claim payment may be reduced proportionately to the premium actually charged |
| Careless breach, insurer would have imposed different terms | Policy treated as if those terms had applied from the start |
Proportionate reduction is the one that surprises people. If the insurer shows it would have charged double the premium had it known about the roof work, a £40,000 water damage claim could be settled at half. You still have a policy, just not the cover you assumed you had bought.
There is also a contractual angle. Most cleaning contracts and tenders require you to maintain specified cover for the life of the agreement. A policy voided for non-disclosure puts you in breach of that contract as well, which can mean losing the account. If you are working to contractual insurance clauses, our guide to public liability limits for cleaning contracts covers how those requirements are usually drafted.
Real examples of material facts in cleaning work
The window cleaner who bought a pole system and a ladder
Water-fed pole work from the ground is rated differently from ladder work, and from anything above two or three storeys. A round quoted on ground-level pole cleaning that quietly includes ladder work at 8 metres is not fairly presented. Height limits usually appear as a policy condition, so exceeding them can also breach the policy terms rather than just the disclosure duty. There is more detail in our guide on window cleaning and working at height, and cover options on the window cleaners insurance page.
The office cleaner holding 60 sets of keys
Keyholding and alarm code access change the risk profile considerably. If a bunch of keys goes missing and the client has to rekey a building, the bill covers locks, labour and sometimes a security guard overnight. Insurers want to know how many sites you hold keys for, how keys are labelled and stored, and whether anyone takes them home. Our keyholding risks guide sets out the controls underwriters like to see, and loss of keys cover is usually bought as an extension rather than being automatic.
The domestic firm that took on a hoarding clean
One deep clean of a hoarded property involves sharps, biological contamination, waste transfer duties and sometimes PPE requirements well beyond a weekly house clean. If that becomes a regular service line, it needs disclosing, and it may need specialist cleaning cover rather than a standard domestic cleaners policy.
The contractor whose wageroll doubled
Liability premiums are usually rated on turnover and wages. If you declared £90,000 of wages at inception and ended the year at £210,000 after winning a schools contract, you owe the insurer a mid-term update or at minimum an accurate declaration at renewal. Most policies also carry an adjustable premium clause, so the figures get checked anyway. Employers' Liability is compulsory under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 once you have employees, with a minimum limit of £5 million and HSE able to fine up to £2,500 for each day you are uninsured. Our guide on Employers' Liability for cleaning companies explains who counts as an employee.
The oven cleaning business using a heated dip tank
Caustic solutions and heated tanks bring burn and fume exposure, plus COSHH obligations. Whether the tank sits in a van or a unit is relevant, as is where the van is parked overnight. See our notes on COSHH for cleaners and on oven cleaning cover for franchisees and independents.
How to make a fair presentation in practice
You do not need legal training. You need a method, and a record that you followed it.
- List every service you sell. Work from your invoices for the last 12 months, not from memory or your website.
- Put a rough percentage of turnover against each. Underwriters price the mix, so "90% office cleaning, 7% carpet cleaning, 3% jet washing" is far more useful than "general cleaning".
- Record your maximum working height and the access methods you use. Include anything you do rarely.
- List the premises types you clean. Flag anything unusual: food production, pharmaceutical, listed buildings, occupied hospital wards, live construction sites.
- Do a claims sweep. Ask supervisors directly about incidents, complaints, injuries and near misses in the past five years. Include anything you paid for yourself.
- Count your people correctly. Employees, labour-only subcontractors, bona fide subcontractors, agency workers, family helpers.
- Check your contract requirements. Pull the insurance clauses from your biggest contracts and make sure the limits and extensions match.
- Write it down and keep it. A dated summary of what you told the broker, plus the completed statement of fact, is your evidence if anything is queried later.
When you are ready to put that information in front of insurers, the commercial cleaning insurance enquiry form asks only the questions that genuinely apply to cleaning businesses, which makes it harder to miss something material through a generic trades form that never mentions keys, treatment risk or working at height.
Fair presentation checklist before you renew
- Services list matched against the last 12 months of invoices
- Turnover and wageroll estimates for the coming year, split by activity
- Maximum working height and all access equipment used
- Number of key sets, fobs and alarm codes held, and how they are stored
- All incidents, complaints, injuries and self-funded breakages in the last five years
- Headcount split between employees and each type of subcontractor
- Chemicals used, with COSHH assessments available on request
- Any new premises, storage unit or vehicle added since last renewal
- Directors' disclosures: insolvency, convictions, previously declined or cancelled cover
- Contractual insurance requirements from your major clients
- A dated copy of everything you submitted, saved somewhere you can find it
Working through this alongside our cleaning insurance renewal checklist takes an hour or two and removes most of the reasons claims get argued over.
Common myths about disclosure
"If they did not ask, I did not have to say." Wrong for commercial customers. The duty is to volunteer material circumstances, not merely to answer questions accurately. Answering a narrow question honestly while leaving out something obviously relevant is not a fair presentation.
"My broker knew, so the insurer knew." Telling your broker is usually the right first step, and a good broker will pass material facts on. But keep a written record of what you told them and when. Verbal mentions in a phone call are hard to prove two years later.
"Small claims do not count." They count if the question asks about them. Read the wording.
"I will update them when it becomes regular." Most liability policies do not require mid-term disclosure of every change, but many contain conditions requiring notification of material alterations in the risk. If you start a new activity in month three, call your broker in month three. Adding pressure washing cover or a carpet and upholstery extension mid-term is straightforward. Arguing about it after a claim is not.
Getting the presentation right from the start
Fair presentation is less about legal technicality and more about making sure the policy you buy matches the business you actually run. An underwriter who knows you clean occupied schools out of hours, hold 60 sets of keys and jet wash car parks in summer can price and structure cover for that. One who thinks you are a two-person office cleaning round cannot.
If you are unsure whether something is material, the safe route is to mention it and let the underwriter decide. There is no penalty for telling an insurer something they turn out not to need. To talk it through, start with the commercial cleaning insurance quote form, or browse all cleaning insurance covers if you are not sure which policy fits. For contract work with tender requirements, the contract cleaners enquiry page is the better starting point. Cover, terms and acceptance always depend on the policy wording and the insurer's assessment of your business.