CPA Bulletin

38 CPA Bulletin > August 2023 www.cpa.uk.net Your customer’s ‘hired-in plant’ insurance policy will likely to have been ‘active’ at the time of the theft, so although your customer is now in administration, the claim should still be settled by their insurance provider. You should speak with your insurance broker to confirm this and should proceed on your behalf. We cross-hired an item of plant from another company and supplied it to our customer. The plant was stolen during the hire period, but our customer has now gone into administration. Can we still bring a claim against our customer even though they are now in administration? Q&As: 1 q&a s Yes, you would always need CPA’s permission before proceeding. This permission would not be granted as the Model Conditions, as with all other CPA terms, are under copyright and cannot be modified or amended in any way. Should you wish to include additional terms which are peculiar to your business, then these must be written on a separate sheet and attached as an addendum set of terms which works in conjunction with the Model Conditions. We are looking to incorporate some of our terms which reflect the plant we supply and our operational needs into the Model Conditions. Do we need CPA’s permission before we do this? When the site is prevented from working due to wet/ inclement weather, what can we charge the customer? If the plant has been supplied under the Model Conditions, then as per clause 25, if the plant is unable to work due to wet/inclement weather, then it is charged at two-thirds of the hire rate for that day. Should an operator be supplied with it, then the charge is split between the plant element only - which is two thirds, whilst the operator is charged at the full rate. However, should the plant and operator work for any part of that day, then the whole of that day is charged at the full rate. Can you advise if there is a requirement to have an advice label on electric and hydraulic breakers, when going out on hire to advise the user of the ‘trigger’ time? Your responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work Act as a supplier is to ensure that the equipment is safe to use when hired out and information relevant to the safe use of the machine is supplied to the user. CPA advocates that this should be the operating instructions provided by the manufacturer (and usually available as a PDF which can easily be forwarded to the user). The ‘trigger’ time - the maximum time advised for continual operation - would be determined by the manufacturer and should be detailed in their operating instructions. It is up to your customer, the user, however, to ensure that the operative using the equipment has been given the appropriate information, instruction and supervision to operate the equipment safely - and to prevent damage or premature wear. Therefore, there is no requirement to have a label on the breaker. Although this can act as a reminder to the operative, labels as such can easily be damaged, become unreadable or be out of sight of the operative during work. You may want instead to consider say an additional leaflet to be passed to the user requesting it is passed to the operative, or a label placed which can be placed in the machine’s cab as a reminder to the operative. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the answers given within this section of the CPA Bulletin, no liability for any damage, liability, cost, loss and/or expense which the reader has incurred can be accepted by the Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA). The reader should obtain independent legal advice on any issue reported within the CPA Bulletin, before proceeding with a course of action. Please could you advise what we can do if a customer doesn’t have ‘hired-in plant’ insurance cover in place? Theremay be a few reasons why the customer doesn’t have ‘hired-in plant’ insurance cover in place. It may, for instance, be due to the fact that the customer infrequently hires in plant, therefore they don’t see the need. Another reasonmay be because the customer is deemed as ‘high risk’ with a number of claims against them, so that any cover could be prohibitively expensive, or the insurer will simply not cover them. With all insurances it is simply a safeguard to ensure that you will be paid for any loss or damage to the plant whilst it is in the customer’s care. So although they may not have cover, they will still be contractually liable for the loss and the ongoing two-thirds hire charges until settlement has been agreed, as per clause 13 of the Model Conditions. In instances like these, it is a commercial decision for you to take whether you still wish to hire to them or not. The CPA has a list of insurance brokers and providers who are CPA members, and their individual contact details can be found at www.cpa.uk.net/legal-insurance-plant-theft/insurance . Any of those businesses should be able to offer you a competitive rate. The various insurance policies for my business are coming up for renewal, and I am looking for competitive quotes. Can you recommend anyone?