The Claim Goes In, the Cover Comes Out: Insurance Holes in a Small Stone Shop

Nobody gets into stonemasonry because they enjoy paperwork. You buy a policy, the certificate goes in a drawer, the direct debit comes out once a month, and you get on with the work. That's fine right up until something goes wrong — and that's when the difference between what you assumed you'd bought and what you actually bought shows up in writing.

This isn't a scare piece, and it isn't legal advice. It's a walk through the claims that actually land on small stone shops, and the clauses that quietly decide them.

Three policies hiding under one direct debit

The first thing to get straight is that "insurance" is rarely one thing. A typical small shop package is a stack of separate covers with separate limits, separate excesses and separate exclusions. The ones that matter to a mason are:

• Public liability. Covers injury to other people and damage to their property, caused by your business. This is the one clients ask to see on a certificate, usually at £2m to £5m.
• Contract works / own and hired-in plant. Covers the materials and kit you're responsible for while a job is in progress — the stone you've bought and not yet fitted, the hired mixer on site.
• Tools and portable equipment cover. Covers your own hand tools, grinders, saws, levels, extractors. Often sold as an add-on, often with a per-item cap and a theft clause that reads like a legal puzzle.
• Motor. Your van policy is separate from all of the above, and it almost never covers the tools inside.

Plenty of shops assume the van policy covers the kit. It doesn't. And plenty assume tool cover extends to anything with a plug, which it usually doesn't once the item is over a value threshold.

Scenario one: the grinder that walked off the job

You finish late, leave the van loaded because you're back on the same site at seven, and overnight someone pops the lock. Next morning: two angle grinders, a combi drill, a laser level and a rail saw gone. Call it £2,400 of kit.

What usually happens next depends entirely on clauses written years before you ever picked up a chisel.

• Locked vehicle requirements. Most tool policies require the vehicle to be locked and the tools to be in a locked compartment or out of sight. A van with no bulkhead or cage can fall foul of this.
• Overnight unattended limits. Many policies reduce the per-claim payout, or exclude theft entirely, when tools are left in a vehicle overnight and not in a secure building.
• Single-article limits. Your £900 rail saw may be capped at £500 unless it's separately listed.
• Proof of ownership. No receipts, no serials, no photos means the loss adjuster has very little to work with, and the claim shrinks accordingly.

The practical fix isn't a different policy — it's a routine. Photograph and log every serial number, keep the receipts in a folder (digital is fine), and mark the kit. Anything registered on a national property database is harder to shift and easier to recover.

Scenario two: the hired saw and the client's wall

You've hired a cut-off saw for a day. On site, the blade grabs, the saw kicks and the client's newly rendered garden wall takes the damage — maybe £1,800 to put right.

The hire company's insurance is not your insurance. They cover their saw. Your liability for the wall is yours. If the claim lands on your public liability policy, it may get paid — but check two things:

1. Hired-in plant cover. Some packages treat mechanically propelled hired plant as a separate class. If it isn't noted, you may find yourself arguing.
2. Care, custody and control. Most public liability policies exclude damage to property in your care, custody or control. A wall you're actively working against can fall inside that exclusion, which is why contract works cover exists.

This is the single most common nasty surprise in the trade: a client's property is only "third-party property" until you start work on it.

Scenario three: the slab that found a car

Stacking stone in a driveway, a slab slides, chips the paint and dents the door of a neighbour's car. This one is usually the cleanest to claim — third-party property, clearly not in your control, public liability responds. The friction is at the front end, not the back: getting someone out to assess it, agreeing a repair rather than a write-off, and paying the excess.

Small claims like this rarely get refused, but they do get logged. Two or three in a couple of years and your renewal conversation changes.

The exclusions that do the real damage

Read the exclusions before you read the cover. The recurring ones in masonry:

• Gradual damage and wear. Rust, damp, frost damage to stored stone and seized machinery are almost always out.
• Faulty workmanship. If the job was done wrong, the policy pays to fix the consequence, not the work itself. Replacing your own bad pointing isn't a claim.
• Damage to your own work. Same principle, applied broadly.
• Theft by deception and employee dishonesty. Often excluded or sub-limited.
• Unoccupied premises. Tool theft from a unit left empty for weeks can be excluded outright.
• Average clause. Insure your kit for £10k when it's worth £20k and a £4k claim gets settled at £2k. Underinsurance is the quiet killer.

Seven questions to put to your broker before renewal

1. Where exactly does my tool cover stop — per item, per claim, and for kit left in a locked van overnight?
2. Is hired-in plant included, and up to what value?
3. Does public liability cover damage to property I'm actively working on, or does the care, custody and control exclusion bite?
4. What's my limit for stone and materials on site and not yet fitted?
5. If a client's wall fails after I've finished, what's covered and what's my own work?
6. Am I insured for the total replacement value of my kit, or did I give a figure three years ago and never revisit it?
7. What do I have to do the day after a theft — police report, notification deadline, photographs?

Write the answers down. A recorded call is worth more than a recollection at claim time.

The bit nobody enjoys

Insurance doesn't stop bad days. It just decides whether a bad day costs you £300 or three months. An hour with a broker who actually understands trade risks, a decent photo log of your kit, and a renewal date diarised rather than remembered — that's the whole strategy. Everything else is hoping.