What Is Hot Works Insurance and Do Tradesmen Need It?

What counts as hot works to an insurer?

Hot works is any job producing heat, flame or sparks capable of igniting something nearby. Insurers use the label to separate work with a real fire exposure from ordinary trade activity.

The activities on every insurer’s list

Arc, MIG, TIG and gas welding all count, along with flame cutting, oxy-fuel work, plasma cutting, disc cutting and angle grinding. So do brazing, soldering, blowtorch work, bitumen boilers and lead burning.

Heat guns, hot-melt flooring adhesive and torch-on felt sit on the same list. If the tool makes heat and the surroundings can burn, a construction insurer treats it as hot work.

Why occasional hot work still counts

There is no threshold below which grinding stops being hot work. Two minutes with a cutting disc can throw sparks far enough to start a fire in a void you never looked into.

Insurers rate frequency, but they do not waive the conditions for low frequency. A joiner who cuts a steel lintel once a year is under the same permit rules as a full-time fabricator that day.

What sparks actually do

Grinding sparks travel further than most people expect and drop through gaps in floors, service risers and dry linings. They settle on dust, insulation and timber where nobody is watching.

The HSE construction pages treat fire on site as a foreseeable risk that has to be planned out rather than watched for.

Is hot works insurance a separate policy?

Almost never. It is an endorsement, condition or warranty written onto the policy you already hold, usually public liability, sometimes with a separate fire excess.

Why the endorsement sits on public liability

A hot works fire is a third-party loss: the client’s building, the neighbour’s roof, the unit next door. That is exactly what public liability insurance is built to answer.

The insurer therefore adds the condition to the public liability section rather than selling you a separate product. The cover is the same policy, on tighter terms.

Where contract works and property cover fit

Fire damage to the job itself, before handover, falls under contract works rather than public liability. Both sections can carry the same hot works condition.

If you own or occupy the building, your own property policy carries its own hot work rules too. One fire can therefore engage three sets of conditions at once.

The separate excess nobody reads

Many insurers apply a higher excess to fire claims arising from hot work than to general liability claims. It is set out in the schedule, not the marketing.

Ask for the fire excess figure in writing when you buy. It changes what a small scorch claim is actually worth to you.

What conditions does a hot work permit impose?

Insurer permit conditions run on hard numbers: a fire watch measured in hours, a clearance zone measured in metres, and a stop time measured against the end of your shift.

The fire watch timings

The Allianz hot work permit ACOM409 requires a continuous fire watch during the work and for at least one hour after it finishes. Checks then continue at intervals of no more than 20 minutes for at least a further hour.

That is two hours of watching for a job that may have taken ten minutes. The HSB and Munich Re loss prevention guidance sets out the same principle in its own wording.

The 10-metre clearance rule

Combustibles have to be cleared within 10 metres of the work, and the Allianz permit spells out that this includes the floors above and below and the far side of walls, screens and partitions. Anything that cannot be moved gets shielded with non-combustible protection.

That vertical element catches people out. A roofer torching felt on a flat roof is responsible for the ceiling void underneath as well as the deck in front of them.

Extinguishers and equipment

The same permit requires at least two suitable portable extinguishers available for immediate use, including at least one water or foam unit with a minimum 13A rating. Immediate use means in reach, not in the van.

A gas engineer brazing a run of pipework needs the extinguisher at the work position, not at the front door.

Why do insurers care so much about delayed ignition?

Because most serious hot work fires do not start while the torch is lit. They start later, in a void, after everyone has gone home.

Most big fires start after the work stops

The HSB and Munich Re guidance makes the point plainly: the majority of major losses have occurred some time after the hot work was finished. Smouldering insulation, dust and timber take time to reach flame.

That lag is the whole reason the fire watch runs for two hours rather than two minutes. Nobody is watching the sparks, they are watching what the sparks landed on.

The two-hour cut-off before the end of a shift

HSB and Munich Re guidance states that hot work should not be allowed within two hours of the end of the normal shift. The point is to make sure the fire watch happens while the site is still staffed and lit.

It also means a builder who squeezes a last cut in at half four has broken the condition before the disc even touches steel.

Thermal imaging and revisits

Insurers increasingly expect a thermal imaging camera to be used before, during and after hot work on larger contracts. It finds hot spots that a visual check misses.

On timber frame, HSB and Munich Re guidance goes further, with continuous monitoring for at least an hour and a revisit two hours after completion.

Which trades trigger a hot works condition?

Any trade that welds, cuts, brazes, solders, torches or grinds. That is a far wider list than most tradespeople assume, and it reaches well past welding shops.

Trades where heat is the job

Welders, fabricators, structural steel erectors and lead workers do hot work every day. So do roofers using torch-on felt or a bitumen boiler.

For those trades the hot works condition is not an add-on, it is the shape of the whole policy. The insurance roofers need is priced around it.

Trades where heat is occasional

A plumber soldering copper with a blowtorch is doing hot work, and so is a glazier with a heat gun or a flooring contractor melting adhesive.

Occasional does not mean exempt. It means you declare it, accept the condition and apply the permit on the days you do it.

What happens if you breach a hot works condition?

You can lose the claim. These are policy conditions rather than site etiquette, so failing to keep a fire watch or clear the 10 metres is a coverage problem, not a telling off.

A condition is not a suggestion

Where the wording is a warranty or a condition precedent, cover can be suspended for the period you were in breach. If the fire starts during that period, the insurer does not have to pay.

The Insurance Act 2015 softened the old rule that any breach discharged the policy forever. It did not remove the consequence of being in breach at the moment of the loss.

Non-disclosure is the other way to lose a claim

Not declaring hot work at all is a failure of the duty of fair presentation. The insurer can then treat the policy as if it had been written on different terms, or avoid it.

That risk applies to every trade, which is why deciding what liability cover you need starts with an honest list of activities rather than a price.

Why evidence matters more than intent

After a fire, the loss adjuster asks for the permit, the fire watch record and the extinguisher check. Doing it properly and recording nothing is very close to not doing it at all.

A completed permit book with times, names and signatures is the cheapest claim protection you will ever buy.

What must a hot work permit record?

A permit is a dated, signed record covering one location, one task and one defined period. An open-ended permit is not a permit as far as an insurer is concerned.

The fields a permit book needs

The core fields are the location, the equipment, the precautions taken, the person doing the work and the person keeping the fire watch. Times for start, finish and end of watch go on the same sheet.

Sign-off at the end matters as much as authorisation at the start. The permit is only closed once the final check has been made.

Keeping the evidence after the job

Keep completed permits with the job file, not loose in the van. On larger contracts the Joint Code of Practice expects permits to be inspected monthly.

Photographs of the cleared area and the extinguishers in position take seconds and back up the paperwork. So does a note of who held the watch and when they finished.

When does the joint code of practice apply?

The Joint Code of Practice on fire prevention on construction sites, now in its 10th edition, applies to projects with an original contract value above £2.5 million.

The £2.5 million contract threshold

Below that value the insurer’s own permit conditions govern. Above it, insurers of the works typically require the Code as a condition of the construction policy.

Subcontractors feel it through the main contractor rather than their own policy. A £5 million public liability limit and Code compliance often arrive in the same contract pack.

What the 10th edition adds

The current edition, published by the Fire Protection Association, tightens the post-work regime. Fire watches extend beyond two hours where the risk assessment calls for it.

It also requires that only trained people carry out hot work, including extinguisher training, and expects thermographic cameras and monthly permit inspections.

How it interacts with cdm duties

The Code is an insurance document, not legislation. Your legal duties still come from CDM 2015 and the fire safety regime that applies to the premises.

In practice the two overlap heavily. A site with proper RAMS and permits satisfies both without doing the job twice.

How do you declare hot works to your broker?

Describe the activity, the frequency and the environment. Insurers price a fabricator in a workshop very differently from the same welding done inside an occupied building.

What the insurer will ask

Expect questions on the proportion of turnover involving heat, whether you work in occupied or listed premises, and whether you work on timber frame. Each of those changes the terms offered.

You will also be asked whether you operate a permit system and who authorises it. Saying yes and meaning it is worth more than any discount code.

What moves the price

Trade risk does most of the work in any trade quote. SimplyQuote’s own tradesman cost guide puts overall premiums between £200 and £1,200 a year, with the spread explained by trade rather than by turnover alone.

Hot works pushes you toward the upper half of that spread. A clean fire claims record and a working permit system are the two things that pull it back down.