public-liability

---
name: public-liability
description: Turns the accident that happens to a customer into a written position before it happens: every place and activity where a member of the public meets your business, the duty you owe them at each one, the limit and basis on your public liability section, the activities you never told the insurer about, the contractor and hired equipment gaps, and an incident response page naming who does what in the first hour. Use when you have outside tables, a function room, live music, outside catering, a delivery service, contractors on site, or simply a floor that gets wet on a Friday.
---

# The accident that happens to a customer, answered by a policy section you have read, not by a phone call you make afterwards

You give this your public liability section and its wording, a description of every place and activity where a member of the public meets the business, your contractor and hire arrangements, and your proposal or statement of fact. You get back a contact points list covering everywhere the public touch you, the duty owed at each, a map onto the policy section with its limit and its basis, the activities that are on your premises but not on your proposal, the products liability position for the food you serve, and a one page first hour response. It will not tell you what limit of indemnity to buy and it will not say whether you would be liable for any particular accident. Liability is decided on facts nobody has yet, by a court or by an insurer, and a document that guessed would be worse than no document.

## What it does

1. **List every place and activity where the public actually meet the business, including the ones that are not on your premises.** The dining room, the bar, the stairs, the toilets, the car park, the pavement tables, the smoking area, the beer garden, the function room, the kitchen when a customer is shown round, the delivery to someone's house, the wedding you catered in a field, the stand at the food festival, the private hire where the customer brings their own DJ. One row per contact point with the days and hours it is live. The insurance question follows the business, and a venue that has quietly become an outside caterer has quietly changed the risk it presented.

2. **Write the duty you owe at each contact point in plain words, from the statutory sources rather than from instinct.** Section 2(2) of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 sets it out: "The common duty of care is a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that the visitor will be reasonably safe in using the premises for the purposes for which he is invited or permitted by the occupier to be there." Section 2(3) adds the line every venue with a children's menu needs in writing, that "an occupier must be prepared for children to be less careful than adults". Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 runs beside it as a criminal duty: "It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety." Note that the two duties are different animals. The 1957 Act decides whether a customer gets compensated; the 1974 Act decides whether the business gets prosecuted, and insurance answers only the first.

3. **Read the public liability section itself, and read the basis of the limit as carefully as the limit.** Record the limit of indemnity, and then record whether it is any one claim, any one occurrence, or in the aggregate for the period of insurance. Those are three different products at the same headline number, and the difference only shows up in the year with more than one claim. Record the excess, whether it applies to each claim or each occurrence, and whether defence costs sit inside the limit or outside it. Record the territorial limits and the jurisdiction clause, because the wedding in the field may be outside both.

4. **Put the proposal beside the contact points list and mark every activity the insurer has never been told about.** Section 3(1) of the Insurance Act 2015 requires that "Before a contract of insurance is entered into, the insured must make to the insurer a fair presentation of the risk", and section 3(4) requires "disclosure of every material circumstance which the insured knows or ought to know". Live music, a bouncy castle, a barbecue, a firepit, a children's play area, outside catering, glass on a pavement, an upstairs function room reached by a single staircase and a pizza oven on the terrace are all activities, not decorations. Each undeclared one is a dated row for the broker, not a decision here about whether it matters.

5. **Handle contractors and hired-in equipment as a separate list, because most venues assume the wrong side of it.** For every contractor who comes on site, record the trade, whether their public liability certificate has been seen, the limit on it, its expiry date, and whether the owner holds a copy. For every piece of hired equipment, record what it is, who supplied it, who is responsible for its condition under the hire agreement, and whether the hire terms shift liability onto the hirer. Section 2(4)(b) of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 is the reason this list exists: an occupier is not automatically answerable for a contractor's work, but the protection depends on having acted reasonably in entrusting the work and in checking it, and a certificate nobody looked at is not a check.

6. **Write the products position for the food and drink, and keep it separate from the premises position.** A customer made ill by a meal is a different claim from a customer who slipped. Record whether the wording covers products, whether it is a separate limit or shares the public liability limit, whether there is an aggregate, and what the exclusions say about food and drink specifically. Record the allergen management position by reference to the venue's existing allergen documents rather than restating them, and note where a food claim would also be a food safety matter for the environmental health officer, which is not an insurance question at all.

7. **Hand the mechanical work to Codex and keep the judgement here.** Run, from the folder holding the wording and the contact points list:

   ```
   codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
   ```

   Claude hands over the contact points list with the owner's own description of each, the duty note written for each, the policy section details transcribed verbatim including the limit, the basis, the excess, the territorial limits and every relevant exclusion, the proposal comparison with the owner's marking of declared or not declared, the contractor and hire registers, and the products section details. Codex returns the contact points register, the cover map, the undeclared activities list, the contractor and hire registers with their expiry dates, and a gaps file. Codex decides no liability question and estimates no limit.

8. **Write the first hour response, because that is the part that is actually used.** One page, laid out for someone holding a mobile phone at half past ten at night: make the person safe and call an ambulance if in any doubt; do not admit liability and do not discuss fault; record what happened in the accident book the same evening; photograph the spot before it is cleaned, mopped or moved; keep the thing that caused it if it can be kept; take the names of witnesses who are not staff; note the RIDDOR question, because regulation 5 of RIDDOR 2013 requires a report where a person not at work "suffers an injury, and that person is taken from the site of the accident to a hospital for treatment in respect of that injury"; and notify the insurer within the time the policy specifies. Name the person on shift who does each of those, by role not by name, so it survives a staff change.

9. **Date everything and set the review at the renewal date.** Put the period of insurance, the renewal date, the build date and the contact points count in the footer of every page. Then list, at the front, the three or four things that would most change the position if they happened: opening the terrace, hiring a marquee, taking on outside catering, letting a third party run an event on the premises. Those are the moments when the proposal stops matching the business, and an owner who has seen them written down is far more likely to ring the broker before the event than after the accident.

## Then it checks

1. Every contact point on the list has a row with the days and hours it is live, and any activity that happens away from the insured premises is marked as off premises rather than folded into the main site.
2. Every contact point carries a written duty note quoting the statutory wording it rests on, and no duty note is written from instinct without a source.
3. The public liability limit is recorded with its basis stated as any one claim, any one occurrence or in the aggregate, and the file says which, rather than recording the number alone.
4. Every activity on the contact points list appears in the proposal comparison marked declared, not declared or not stated, and every not declared and not stated row is addressed to the broker with a date.
5. Every contractor row records whether a certificate was seen, its limit and its expiry date, and every expired or unseen certificate is listed as a gap.
6. The first hour response names a role for every action, includes the photography and do not admit liability lines, and states the policy's own notification period read from the wording rather than a general figure.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state a typical public liability premium, a typical slip and trip claim value, a typical settlement, or a claim frequency per thousand customers for a single independent UK hospitality business. No such published figure exists, the numbers that circulate are marketing from people selling policies or claims services, and an owner who believes one will either buy on a false comparison or dismiss a real exposure as unlikely.
- Never tell the owner what limit of indemnity to buy, and never suggest a figure by naming what other venues carry. Record the limit held and the basis it is written on, and send the question to the broker.
- Never say whether the business would be liable for a given accident, and never write a sentence that reads as though it has decided. Liability turns on evidence that does not exist until after the event and is decided by an insurer, a court or a settlement.
- Never record an activity as covered because it is not excluded. Public liability wordings are written around the activities declared, and an undeclared activity is a fair presentation question before it is a cover question.
- Never treat a contractor's certificate as checked without its limit and expiry date written down. An out of date certificate in a folder is the same as no certificate and reads worse afterwards.
- Never put a customer's medical details, name or contact details into the cover audit files. Those belong in the incident record handled by the accident-book skill, under its own data protection rules.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's own FCA authorised insurance broker to check, and for their solicitor on any question of liability and their environmental health officer on any food safety matter. It applies published rules to documents the owner supplied. It is not advice on which policy to buy, it is not a statement that any incident would be covered, and it is not a legal opinion on liability.

## Built from
- Occupiers' Liability Act 1957, section 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/5-6/31/section/2, read 23 September 2026: the common duty of care, the wording on children, and the contractor position in subsection (4), in steps 2 and 5.
- Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, section 3, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/3, read 23 September 2026: the criminal duty to persons not in the employer's employment, in step 2.
- Insurance Act 2015, section 3, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/4/section/3, read 23 September 2026: the duty of fair presentation and the disclosure of every material circumstance, in step 4.
- Insurance Act 2015, Schedule 1, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/4/schedule/1, read 23 September 2026: the proportionate remedies that follow an undeclared activity, which is why step 4 lists rather than explains.
- The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013, SI 2013/1471, regulation 5, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/1471/regulation/5/made, as made, read 23 September 2026: the duty to report an injury to a person not at work who is taken from the site to hospital for treatment, in step 8.
- Health and Safety Executive, "Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969: A brief guide for employers", HSE40(rev4), https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hse40.pdf, first published 11/12, read 23 September 2026: the statement that public liability insurance covers claims by members of the public and other businesses but not employees, and that it is generally voluntary, which is the boundary between this skill and the employers-liability skill.
- Financial Conduct Authority Handbook, ICOBS 5.2, https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/ICOBS/5/2.html, rule effective 1 October 2018, read 23 September 2026: the demands and needs duty that makes the broker the right recipient of the undeclared activities list in step 4.

# public-liability

## You are given
The public liability position of one UK independent hospitality business. A contact points list written by the owner, with one row per place or activity where a member of the public meets the business, each carrying a plain description, whether it is on or off the insured premises, the days and hours it operates, the approximate number of people present at its busiest, and whether it involves children, alcohol, heat, height, water, vehicles, amplified music or animals, each answered by the owner as yes or no. For each contact point the owner has written a duty note quoting the statutory wording relied on. The public liability section of the policy, transcribed verbatim: the section name as printed, the limit of indemnity, the basis of that limit, the excess and what it applies to, whether defence costs are inside or outside the limit, the territorial limits, the jurisdiction clause, the notification condition with its time period, and every exclusion the owner has identified as relevant, each quoted verbatim with its clause number. The products liability details, transcribed the same way. The proposal form or statement of fact and the owner's marking, for every contact point, of `declared`, `not declared` or `not stated`. A contractor register with, for each contractor, the trade, the certificate sighting, the limit on the certificate, the certificate expiry date and whether a copy is held. A hired equipment register with, for each item, the supplier, who is responsible for its condition under the hire agreement, and whether the hire terms shift liability to the hirer. All judgement calls, including every duty note, every declaration marking and the decision that an activity belongs on the list, have already been made by the owner and are supplied to you.

## Produce
Write into a `./public-liability-output/` folder:

1. `contact-points.csv` with these columns in this order: `point_ref`, `description_verbatim`, `on_or_off_premises`, `days_live`, `hours_live`, `peak_people_present`, `involves_children`, `involves_alcohol`, `involves_heat`, `involves_height`, `involves_water`, `involves_vehicles`, `involves_amplified_music`, `involves_animals`, `duty_note_verbatim`, `duty_source_quoted`. `point_ref` is CP001 upward. `on_or_off_premises` is exactly one of `insured premises`, `off premises`, `both`. Every `involves_` column is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`.
2. `cover-map.csv` with columns: `point_ref`, `description_verbatim`, `section_name_verbatim`, `limit_gbp`, `limit_basis`, `excess_gbp`, `excess_applies_to`, `defence_costs_position`, `territorial_limits_verbatim`, `relevant_exclusion_verbatim`, `exclusion_clause_number`, `status`. `limit_basis` is exactly one of `any one claim`, `any one occurrence`, `in the aggregate`, `not stated`. `excess_applies_to` is exactly one of `each claim`, `each occurrence`, `each period of insurance`, `not stated`. `defence_costs_position` is exactly one of `inside the limit`, `outside the limit`, `not stated`. `status` is exactly one of `covered`, `not covered`, `not stated`.
3. `undeclared-activities.csv` with columns: `point_ref`, `description_verbatim`, `declaration_status`, `date_activity_began`, `proposal_statement_verbatim`, `broker_question_ref`, `date_referred`. `declaration_status` is exactly one of `declared`, `not declared`, `not stated`. Every row that is not `declared` is listed in `gaps.md`.
4. `products-position.md` recording, on separate lines and nothing else: whether the wording includes products liability, stated as `yes`, `no` or `not stated`; the products limit and whether it is a separate limit or shares the public liability limit; whether an aggregate applies; every food or drink related exclusion quoted verbatim with its clause number; and the name and date of the venue's allergen document referred to, which is named and never restated. Every line names the document and clause the fact came from.
5. `contractor-register.csv` with columns: `contractor_ref`, `contractor_name`, `trade`, `certificate_seen`, `certificate_limit_gbp`, `certificate_expiry_date`, `copy_held`, `status`. `certificate_seen` and `copy_held` are `yes` or `no`. `status` is exactly one of `certificate current`, `certificate expired`, `certificate not seen`, `not stated`, derived only from the supplied expiry date compared with the supplied file build date. Every row not `certificate current` is listed in `gaps.md`.
6. `hired-equipment-register.csv` with columns: `item_ref`, `item_description`, `supplier`, `hire_agreement_held`, `responsible_for_condition`, `liability_shifted_to_hirer`, `hire_terms_clause_verbatim`. `hire_agreement_held` is `yes` or `no`. `responsible_for_condition` is exactly one of `supplier`, `hirer`, `not stated`. `liability_shifted_to_hirer` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`.
7. `first-hour-response.md` a single page printing, as a numbered list in this order and nothing else: make the person safe and call an ambulance if in any doubt; do not admit liability and do not discuss fault; record the incident in the accident book the same day; photograph the location before it is cleaned or moved; retain the item that caused it; take names and contact details of non staff witnesses; consider the RIDDOR question for a member of the public taken from the site to hospital; notify the insurer within the period stated in the notification condition. Each line ends with the role responsible, taken from the owner's supplied list, and the final line prints the notification period transcribed verbatim from the policy condition with its clause number.
8. `change-triggers.md` a numbered list of the contact points and activities the owner has marked as planned or possible but not yet live, each printing the description verbatim and the words `ring the broker before this starts`.
9. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every contact point with no duty note; every `not stated` cell in `cover-map.csv`; every activity not declared on the proposal; every contractor whose certificate is expired or unseen; every hired item with no hire agreement held; every exclusion recorded without a clause number; and any date supplied without a source document.

## Rules
- Codex maps, transcribes, compares and sorts. It never decides whether the business would be liable, never decides whether an activity is material, never writes a duty note, and never sets or suggests a limit. Those were supplied.
- Never estimate a limit, an excess, a notification period or an expiry date. A missing value is an empty cell and a line in `gaps.md`.
- Never derive a contractor certificate status from anything except the supplied expiry date compared with the supplied file build date. Never assume a certificate has been renewed.
- Never record a contact point as `covered` because no exclusion was supplied for it. Absence of a supplied exclusion produces `not stated`.
- Never write a typical premium, a typical claim value, a settlement figure, a claim frequency or any other benchmark into any file. No such published figure exists for a single independent UK hospitality business and none is to be recorded.
- Never record a customer's name, contact details, injury details or any medical information in any file in this folder. If such data is supplied, record only that an incident reference exists and put a line in `gaps.md` saying the personal data belongs in the incident record, not here.
- Never summarise an exclusion, a territorial limit or a notification condition. Copy it verbatim with its clause number.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner's own FCA authorised insurance broker to check, and for their solicitor on any question of liability. It records supplied wordings and supplied markings and is not advice on which policy to buy or a statement that any incident would be covered.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the number of contact points on and off the insured premises, the public liability limit with its basis exactly as recorded, whether defence costs are inside or outside the limit, the count of activities marked `not declared` or `not stated` and their descriptions, the products position conclusion from `products-position.md` stated in full, the count of contractors whose status is not `certificate current` and their names, the count of hired items with no hire agreement held, the notification period printed in `first-hour-response.md` with its clause number, and the `gaps.md` item count.