Here in the UK, whether we believe it or not, we have a very good legislative system which aims to try and put in place laws to help the country and it’s people for the greater good. Yes, we do have occasions to laugh and criticize at some daft, arcane law that simply does not apply. Overall, for every one of these there are hundreds that prove the opposite.

One of the greatest pieces of legislation that is designed to help, and protect, employees is the Employers Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969. There were acts before, which are included in this one and there have been more revisions than you could shake a stick at, but the 1969 Act is the one referred to all the time. It is the one that we study when looking to pass insurance qualifications and the one that the commercial insurance companies refer to in their policy wordings.

In it’s most basic form, the act says that if you have employees then you are an employer and you must have in force valid insurance that will pay out in the event of an employee being injured during the course of their employment. Public liability insurance is the “sister” cover for injury, illness, disease or damage to third parties, both person and property.

The act is designed to be very loose, so that insurers cannot rely on clauses, warranties or conditions. If you are injured there should be a policy to pay out. If you have contributed to this, through stupidity or just plain ignorance of your actions (ie going for 6 pints at lunch and then climbing, and falling off a ladder) then there is still the potential of a claim, but any settlement will be reduced. Believe it or not a solicitor will argue that unless there was straining in place, to explain that you should not climb a ladder if incapacitated.

There is a small problem though, which came to light with the myriad of lung diseases that miners and asbestos workers had many, many years later. Some of these diseases were 20 or 30 years after people had stopped working. Quite correctly, rather than put an additional burden on the NHS and the Welfare State, there was a process put in place to identify who the insurers were in the past. As you can imagine, with a whole raft of business insurance companies being taken over, merged or even going bust, trying to find who the insurers were, when the illness started, was like the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Recently, the law was changed to say that businesses must keep copies of their certificates of employers liability for 40 years. This put the onus on the employer to keep records, but there was no confidence in this process actually being the answer to future problems identifying insurers.

The latest change is that a central database, the Employers Liability Tracing Office has been set up. They will collate the PAYE reference numbers of all businesses that have employers liability insurance in force. This way they can quite easily tie up the employer with the employers liability insurance company.

There is not ulterior motive (at this stage). But, if this is a process to check whether employers have adequate cover in place, all well and good. An employer without adequate cover could be fined up to £2,500 per day.