Is Hairdressing Insurance a legal requirement?

If you own a hairdressing salon, you may be wondering if hairdressing insurance is a legal requirement. The answer is both yes and no. If you’re setting up a hairdressing business (either by opening a salon or starting your own mobile hairdressing service), and you have staff working for you, then you are legally obliged to have employer’s liability insurance in place. Legally, if you don’t employ staff, you’re not required to obtain hairdressing insurance. However, it’s certainly advisable if you want to avoid a number of possible pitfalls.

Is hairdressing insurance a legal necessity for salons?

Hairdressing salon owners tend to be aware of the problems that they may face: flood or fire damage to their salon; a brick being thrown through a window; burglary and theft of stock or cash; accidents within the salon such as slips or trips; hairdressing treatments that have gone wrong; utilities such as gas or electric cut off. Despite this, some salon owners still think that these problems won’t happen to them. Therefore, they attempt to save money by only purchasing liability insurance, rather than the full cover that they need. Unfortunately, this can leave their business at risk if anything outside the scope of their liability insurance were to go wrong, which may leave their business in ruin as they struggle to come up with the funds to pay off compensation claims or fight legal battles.

Is hairdressing insurance a legal requirement for freelance & mobile hairdressers?

The majority of freelance and mobile hairdressers are keen to ensure that they purchase the right hairdressing insurance when setting up in business. This gives them peace of mind that they’re protected should anything go wrong. But again, there are many self-employed hairdressers out there who believe that the worst won’t happen to them and are willing to take chances.

In general, there is no legal requirement for a mobile hairdresser to purchase insurance, other than employer’s liability insurance, which they’re legally required to have if they have any employees, and motor insurance if they’re using a vehicle to get to and from their clients.

If you have any employees, there are certain obligations when it comes to insurance. Not only do you have to have it, you also have to display the certificate of employer’s liability insurance in a way that means your employees can see it, and you need to keep records of your insurance for 40 years. You’re allowed to display the certificate digitally if all of your employees can access it.

Similarly, if you use a vehicle you need to ensure that you are able to produce your motor insurance certificate if requested to do so.
However, you may also be legally required to insure any business property that you’ve bought via a credit agreement. That credit agreement could make you contractually responsible for insuring the equipment and failing to insure it while the credit agreement is in force you mean you are in breach of the credit agreement.

Do mobile hairdressers need public liability insurance?

Although they’re not required by law to purchase hairdressing insurance, it can protect them against all sorts of disasters. For example, what if a client suffered an injury after falling over the hairdresser’s bag? Or what if a hairdressing treatment didn’t turn out as planned and the client chose to sue the hairdresser? It may be difficult to believe, but this has been known to happen even when the damage was actually caused by another hairdresser altogether! It’s simply not worth putting your business at risk. Hairdressing might not seem like the most dangerous job in the world, but in a busy environment like a hair salon, things can easily go seriously wrong. Our hairdressing insurance policy for freelance and mobile hairdressing offers the option to add extra cover for money, stock and equipment, personal accident for hands, and legal expenses. It really can serve as a low-cost safety net for you and your hairdressing business.

Hairdressing insurance tailored to your requirements

If you are a hairdresser who’s looking for insurance at an affordable price, we’ve got you covered. We offer a number of great insurance deals designed specifically for hairdressers, ensuring that we can cater to your specific business needs. Whether you’re a freelance or mobile hairdresser or you own a hairdressing salon and want to ensure that you’re fully covered, we can assist. Whilst we can’t stop accidents and mishaps from occurring (unfortunately!), we can make sure that you are financially protected should the worst happen.

Salon Gold provides hair salons insurance & mobile and freelancer hairdressers insurance. See further information on our salon insurance page.