There was an earlier thread on this subject.

Event organisers have duties put upon them in the "guides", and one will be to ensure that the medical cover they engage is appropriate for the task in hand. This usually means they will expect you to have certain infrastructure in place that you can simply wheel down to the location, set up shop, and get on with the job.

So they will probably expect you to have appropriate and suitable temporary accommodation, patient trolleys, equipment trolleys, means to store and dispense hot and cold water (the first essential for the hot, sweet tea for the crew!), lighting if it gets dark, heating if it gets cold, etc, etc, etc.

And irrespective of one's views on the likelihood of claims arising (yet another previous thread), an acceptable level of PL insurance. For that, you need to demonstrate policies on skill updates, record-keeping and suchlike.

The moment you set yourself up as an organisation available for hire, even if only one of you (but then any event should be covered by a minimum of two according to the guides), you must have EL insurance (that's the law). To obtain that, you will usually have to satisfy the insurer on a number of matters.

And for some events you will need approval from various bodies e.g. Professional Boxing - the British Boxing Board of Control, Amateur Boxing - many local authorities insist on an approval process to which you must submit or they won't license the promoter to run the event.

Once you have done all this, you need to cost it all out, work out a schedule for consumables replacement costs (usage, out-dating, general losses), add that in. Then you can cost your time, plus you need to consider the time spent in organising your element of the event, which may include pre-event site inspection, pre-event meetings with organisers, fire/NHS ambo/local authority/sometimes police. And there you are.

Simple, really!

I've run this up off the top of my head, so bound to have forgotten something, which I will no doubt be corrected over!


Posted by JonAcc

No, the PL is for you and your staff. There are only a tiny number of companies that offer this, and the one we use performs a monitoring role on our training and skill updates, etc. We have pre-agreed levels with them (so for example a SR Para can use their skills, as most Trusts do not cover their staff for private or voluntary work), Techs can prescribe their more limited drug list, etc. No way would an event organiser have this sort of cover - they expect the organisation they hire to do this.

We also have a personal Insurance on all staff, so if they are injured in the line of duty, there is some compensation arrangement in place.

Never had to claim on either of these in 27 years, but as each year goes by, I feel more comfortable with them in place, despite the cost in apparently "dead money".

You will also have to consider what you do about insuring all this equipment you will purchase. When I do a tot-up of everything (from gallipots to generators), and including the kit on our 3 x EVs, I get a back-of-the-envelope figure of around £250,000 if we had to replace it all from scratch - and that's without the vehicles.

Posted by JonAcc

DB
Our broker negotiated with different companies for their specialist areas. So EL is with one, PL with another (same company as MIR use, but we have negotiated a wider range of skills, hence the monitoring role), PA is with a third.

Due to the high cost of insuring equipment (you really need "All Risks, UK Wide", "New for Old"), it was clearly an impossible task, as we adopt the NHS approach of standing our own cover. If we break or lose it, we replace it.

Posted by JonAcc

Thanks for the reply JonAcc,

So Basically I need (insurance wise)

Public Liability
Medical Indemdnity
Employers Liability
Personell
Equipment

Do you have one that provides you with all or do you have seperate insurers for different aspects?

Thanks

Daddybear

Posted by DaddyBear

Again thank you all very much for your replys and advice, I will take them on bored.

Best
Regards
DaddyBear

Posted by DaddyBear

We frequently receive calls like this. I had a lady crying into the phone that she had two nights of "concert in the park", 5000 tickets all sold out, and she had received a fax 36 hours before the event saying they wouldn't be there. I had another call from North Yorkshire (we are East London/Essex borders) offering effectively open cheque plus hotel board plus anything I cared name, but just come because we have a two-day motorcycle benefit event with umpty-thousand people expected, and we just received this fax .....

These are two that particularly stick in my mind, but we have covered loads of jobs like this. I hate it when the telephone conversation opens with "I was given your number because we have this event and we had cover booked with ................."

The calls do not come from just one area, but literally, we receive them from all over England, and all for the same household name organisation (bar one instance). People are prepared to throw the risk assessment out of the window and take whatever you can give them rather than cancel the event.

Regretfully for them, we are not prepared to take this approach. We only take on what we think we can manage, and manage properly, (not always easy to plan as organisers now book us over a year in advance to be sure of getting in, but we don't have our people's work-shifts that far in advance).

We try to adopt a responsible approach, and recognise that our failure to attend can have catastrophic events for some organisers. (Just a shame that some organisers do not recognise that fact when they book us!)

Posted by JonAcc

MPH
I accept that there are always (at least) two sides to every story, but would venture the point that if we receive this many calls - as we do - and I know of other independents who claim to receive a similar level of distressed phone calls, then something in the system must be breaking down somewhere. And it is leaving that organisation with a very poor name across the UK.

Perhaps a review of procedures should be considered?

Posted by JonAcc

Pas.

I Know of your love for the VAs.

Perhaps it would assist you to conduct your investigations, gather evidence, FACTUAL not personal views and then send this to The DG/CE at BRC or STJA. I personally feel some remarks here might be liabelous and not in your interests.

Professional conduct is nore important than a slanging match....show the evidence!

Posted by scottydog

I am gathering witness statements regarding the infamous "we are IHCD qualified front line ambulance crew" statements frequently made to event organisers. Someone at RX has also put this in an email to me. needless to say the IHCD are not at all happy and in their words is "misrepresentation". They are not supposed to claim to be "IHCD qualified front line ambulance crew" and this is a very misleading statement.

As of January, all of my boys (and girls) WILL be IHCD qualified Care Assistants and Technicians (including me I'm doing the IHCD Tech course.)

If an event organiser thinks they are getting an IHCD frontline ambulance technician when in fact they are getting a first aider whose certificate just happens to be validated by the IHCD then this is misrepresentation and not a very ethical thing to do. In fact this is in direct breach of the Trades Descriptions Act 1968.

I think it is highly likely the RX got IHCD to validate their course simply so that they could make this misleading claim. I on the other hand am getting my course validated by the Royal College of Surgeons Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care. I could get the IHCD to validate it but I don't like to con my customers. I would rather not attempt to mislead them.

Posted by pas

I agree that there are some event organisers who think you are waiting with bated breath by the phone for them to ring you when they remember, and seem to think theirs is the only event you are covering all year!

Posted by JonAcc