To request that my cleaner has insurance?

[doubleginplease]

I am struggling to find someone to help me out with housework and have put a message up on gumtree. However one of the candidates has come back to me saying she hasn't got insurance because she uses her clients cleaning products and therefore this is enough.

Am I right in saying this isn't enough and i should ask for her to have insurance?

Im thin on the ground, looking to pay £10ph for 5 hours work with flexible hours and it seems not many people are interested!!!

If you want insurance then go through an agency, or get your own arranged. I've never heard of a self employed cleaner with insurance.

Just bought £1million of Public Liability insurance for £60 for my business which runs along similar lines.

I try to earn £10 per hour as a minimum after costs.

YANBU to want someone providing a service to have insurance, but bear in mind that the person has to travel to work, cover insurances for PL, vehicle, buy consumables, pay themselves a pension and take a wage after tax and NI and keep up to date with training and best practice.

Plenty of legitimate businesses providing domestic cleaning in my part of the world. Maybe consider using one of these instead?

You tend to get what you pay for with service businesses.

So you want a person who will buy their own cleaning products, have insurance and transport themselves between different workplaces unpaid, as well as not getting national insurance or compulsory employers pension contributions, or statutory holiday pay, for the measly 2.80 pounds an hour you are paying above the minimum wage?

YANBU. I'm self employed and paid less than that an hour on average and I have insurance. I'm not a cleaner but it's a similar job in that it involves going into clients' houses. It costs me under £20 a month for insurance and I consider it worth it because it's a selling point that helps me to get more clients and it protects me from potential costs if anything ever did go wrong. Accidents happen and insurance offers important peace of mind.

Public liability insurance is rather cheap as long as you're not a one man band asbestos taster.

Going rate for a cleaner around here is £10 an hour. The one I know who has insurance and an enhanced DBS check is £12. Seems reasonable to me - you aren't just paying for the costs of obtaining them, you are paying for something very few cleaners actually have.

She's also a bloody good cleaner, of course. Meticulous is not even close. Which is why she's very busy despite charging more.

If your area pays a lot less than ours, though, then YANBU. These things are very area specific, obviously.

I've just done a very quick google for 'insurance for cleaners' and the first couple of hits that come up have excesses starting at £150, so it would have to be some pretty hefty damage or breakages before the insurance made a difference - this isn't going to be much good for the odd broken glass or chipped mug.
If you are in an area of low employment, and you aren't getting any suitable applicants, then it is pretty obvious you aren't paying enough for what you want.

Perhaps the compromise is that you take out the insurance policy for the cleaner you like, or find a way of increasing your household insurance to cover her?

I'm a cleaner and I have insurance and use my own products. I do build this into my costings though so I charge more than £10 an hour.

Cleaners going into clients homes should absolutely be furnished with insurance to be operating professionally as a business, which is important for a client's peace of mind for numerous reasons not least being that the person you allow into your home with access to your things requires a level of trust and operating as a business shows intention to keep things above board and legitimate with regards to paying tax and insurances, which in turn demonstrates honest intentions with the clients' best interests at heart.

However as a cleaning business owner (private company not agency), I feel £10 an hour an unprofitable rate for a business given the costs involved, that would be more of a 'cleaning lady' rate for a cleaner operating 'under the radar' of the tax man.

We need at least £15 per hour and remain fully booked but can never find and train staff fast enough to meet the demand in which we find ourselves. The same applies across the domestic cleaning industry all across the UK even with business who charge more than we do, it's finding enough staff that is always the problem.

There is a LOT of work involved in running a cleaning business behind the scenes even for the agency model and margins are extremely tight and suitable staff scarce on the ground.

Damselindistress- Sounds good, Id go to £12 if they were really good.

Atenco- Yes, £2.80 more an hour than the same self employed cleaners would be getting if they were working through an agency. But also no, I have offered for them to use my products.

sparechange- Its more for piece of mind than anything. Im not really concerned about the odd mug etc more if she left a tap on and flooded my house or she left an iron on face down and it caused a fire. Rubbish examples!

sleeponeday- Im in a run down town in Somerset (not too much info as i don't want to out myself!).

Think Im going to cut my losses and go back to the agency!

I live in a cheap town in the north east and £10 isn't quite a lot. Average is £11-12 for self employed cleaners. I couldn't afford one! I'd expect insurance for this prices perhaps but not at £10 or less

We pay £12 an hour for our cleaner. She is self employed (aren't they all?) and provides me with an invoice every week.

She has insurance (as she is self employed).

Just as well really as she breaks things (including vacuum cleaners) on a very regular basis.

What does this insurance cover? If the cleaner breaks something? Accidentally damages carpet or other surface? What if she injures herself?

I've seen house insurance policies that include damage by domestic cleaners. Maybe that's the way to go?

Cleaners' public liability insurance will not cover items below the excess (in our case £250) it is more a protection against major damage like flood or fire.

What if she falls down the stairs and sues you? You need to make sure you have public liability insurance that covers this.

our public liability insurance covers any damage to property above the value of £250 including employee insurance for damage to our employee's bodies at work as long as they follow health and safety policy.

I work in peoples homes and to be a member of the association I am in, we must have insurance and I think you are right to insist.

We pay our cleaner significantly more than you pay yours.
She's good, and very trustworthy. We have various items that have some value (as dh works in the antiques trade). She's never broken anything.
No idea if she has insurance - on the (relative) pittance we pay her, I wouldn't even think to ask.

Important to define insurance. Public liability will only cover any legal liabilty the cleaner has to you - a cleaner could break things or even cause a fire etc but still not be legally liable and therefore not covered, even with a policy in place. As a poster above said - think about what you think you need to cover first.

There's two types of insurance. Public liability and insurance to cover damages to personal items.

Public liability is for things like the client hurting themselves when they slip on the wet floor, or me somehow burning down the house.

Then there's special insurance for things like spilling bleach on a carpet.

I also had driver's insurance for professional use that's different from ordinary insurance policies. If I'd been involved in an accident under ordinary liability and it became known that I was driving to a clients house it would have been invalid.

It always gets under my skin when I hear people express the opinion that a given wage is too much for a cleaner. "That's more than I make an hour!" So what? Perhaps you can't afford a cleaner or perhaps you ought to become a cleaner,yourself.

It's true Massive that cleaners have to charge what they need to cover all their business costs and leave a decent wage for themselves for the work they do on-site for the clients plus the considerable amount of work they do behind the scenes to have their schedule running smoothly, their cloths washed each day and their stock updated not to mention all their business admin to attend plus clients to quote, after all these have been considered and factored in £10 per hour would leave an hourly wage of much less than min wage.

If there are employees to pay for the cost is significantly more again as their is also 5 weeks per year annual leave to pay for for each plus SSP and maternity should these occur, all need costing in. Everyone needs to be paid and come away with a healthy wage including the business owner (who i can vouch always gets paid last and late paying clients is taken from their wages not the employees, it can be a real struggle to manage and balance cash-flow when you've already paid for a clients clean and then the don't pay you for weeks.

No matter how 'expensive' a customer perceives cleaning to be (and I agree it's not cheap) it is what it has to be so that people can take a decent wage out of it.

Cleaners know that there are clients who will pay their rates happily for all the benefits associated with a professionally run service, but then there are clients who just want it for £10 per hour or even cheaper - these clients are not 'our clients' they are the clients of the cleaning ladies who are not insured or registered to pay tax on this income. I don't have much involvement with that side of the industry other than to be aware it exists, that element will not alter anything at all for the well-run business end of the industry, it is the 'underbelly' of the industry and a separate entity to the self-employed cleaner running a small business legitimately with all the associated costs involved.

I've worked as a cleaner for small companies, and I currently run a pet care company. YANBU. You should have public liability insurance when self employed IMO. It's actually fairly cheap- mine is around £85/year.

I'd be looking for someone who was properly self employed and running their cleaning work as a small business, as opposed to someone who was after cash in hand and not taking proper precautions. Insurance protects her as well as you.

I agree with most of the other posters. It isn't unreasonable, but you would have to pay at the upper end of the scale so she can still take home a decent wage. Cleaners, like everyone else, are trying to pay rent, buy food etc, and if she has to take a lot of money out of her wage to pay for insurance then it might not be worthwhile for her to do it. Good cleaners where I live charge around £15ph.