Volunteer driving for school

[groundhogmum]

10 children in my DS class (incl my DS) are going to a football session at a local centre and the parents have been asked to transport them. It's only an afternoon and I am happy to take my DS and his best friend (on arrangement with best friend's parents).

School have told me I need Business insurance to take the friend however my Insurer tell me my current social domestic cover is enough as I am not being paid.

Is this correct? Does anyone know what cover I do need as the Insurance call centre are worse than useless and school are "looking into it". We are supposed to be going pretty soon and I don't want to leave this other parent in the lurch by leaving it too late to sort something out.

When i took some children form school to our local nature reserve I just had to take in my driving licence and insurance documents. Staff weren't able to drive the children without business insurance. That was last July so may have changed since then

The only document that I can find is a document from 2003 on all types of insurance cover for schools (and therefore way out of date). This very unhelpfully say that schools should ask parents to confirm that they have insurance for school use!

My suggestion is that you ask the question of your insurer in writing and get the reply in writing. If that says you only need social and domestic for a voluntary activity then you would appear to be covered for insurance purposes.

However what the school might have in their policy about volunteers may be different and it is quite possible that they would take the view that they are protecting their own backs by insisting on business cover.

Sorry not sure there is an easy answer to this, unless someone else can come up with much more recent legislation to cover the situation.

Thank you for your help everyone, not really got time to write to the Insurer as the trip is the end of the week. Will try emailing them in the morning and hope for a non automated response

At my dc's school, the way it works is the same as we do with Scouts lift sharing.

If the school / other organisation "organises it" then they risk being seen as in some way liable should there ever be any incident for which people are looking for someone to blame.
If, however, they say to parents "Can you get your children there", and Parent of child A arranges for their child to go with Parent of child B, then that's a private arrangement between the two parents, and not the school's responsibility. So you don't need any different insurance as you are just going about your normal life, doing a bit of lift sharing with friends.
If a member of staff takes children in their car, then they need to get business insurance, as it is connected to their work.