"Insurers will put the onus on the insured not to be negligent and leave themselves open to disaster"
Check the small print of many household policies carefully and it quickly becomes obvious that many offices at home are completely exempt from any cover.
The standard policy will only insure outbuildings or garages that are attached to the house and secured as part of the premises. Stand-alone sheds are not covered. This may not have mattered if you kept a few rusty buckets and not much else in an old shed but convert that to an office and it becomes a major loophole. Again specialised home-worker policies will specifically include “home lodges” or wooden chalets in the garden as well as converted barns or outbuildings.
Buried in the small print there are some basic rules of insurance. Insurers will put the onus on the insured not to be negligent and leave themselves open to disaster.
In the case of household policies this might mean the installation of five-lever deadlocks on every door and adequate window locks on downstairs windows. Installing a burglar alarm can sometimes reduce the premiums, as can membership of a neighbourhood watch scheme.
Many insurers will also reduce the premium if the insured accepts an excess on any claim. The standard these days is £100 but if you are prepared to pay a higher amount yourself, the premium is usually reduced.
Homeworkers can help themselves still further with a few simple checks. Backing up the hard disk is an obvious security measure that many of us ignore. Temple says the worst offenders are those who do a lot of travelling, fill the laptop up with valuable information, do not take a back up copy and then leave the computer in the car where it is stolen.
With all the bad weather last year, one area of concern was lightning strikes. Mr Temple warns “You can’t believe what a jolt will travel down a BT line into your computer.” The modem and even the hard disk can become completely corrupted and fax machines rendered useless.
If you are at home and a storm is coming, turn off the computer and unplug as many telephone connections as you can. And remember, a storm may well mean power cuts so save any vital information onto a back up disk.
Home worker Liz Mitchum had just such an experience last year. “The storm hit us really suddenly one evening. There had been very little warning and because it was “after work”, it did not even occur to us that there would be any problem.
“The computer was switched off but was still plugged into the telephone line because the computer also doubled as our fax machine. The next morning all hell broke loose when I tried to operate the computer.
“The net result was an expensive trip down the high street to find a new computer. Our insurance did not cover us – the household policy was not good enough, nor was the insurance we had bought with the computer.
“To make it worse it came at a time when the cash flow was at rock bottom. I now unplug whenever possible.”
