Care Home Insurance
Care home insurance is not one product, and no law requires you to buy anything with that name. What a home needs is a programme, because an operator is not only exposed to fire, theft and employee injury: it is responsible for the safety and dignity of people who may be frail, living with dementia or lacking capacity. In England that responsibility sits with the Care Quality Commission, which can impose conditions, suspend a registration and prosecute the company and the people running it. This page sets out where the real exposures are, which of them a commercial combined policy answers badly, and what a specialist broker should ask before quoting.
A Programme, Not a Policy
There is no statutory care home package. Care sector insurance is assembled from the same sections as any other commercial programme — the difference is what they have to answer for. In most businesses a liability claim comes from a visitor. Here it comes from someone who lives on the premises and depends on your staff for mobility, medication and personal care.
The premises and the equipment. Buildings and contents at a realistic reinstatement value, then the assets a home runs on: hoists, stand aids, slings, profiling beds, a commercial kitchen, a laundry, a lift. Most of it is both an asset and a liability exposure, because the failures that damage it also injure people.
The liabilities. Employers’ liability for care, nursing and domestic staff — the section most often claimed on, because manual handling, slips and aggression are everyday risks here. Public and products liability for residents and visitors. And treatment liability or medical malpractice wherever care and medication are actually delivered, which is what a commercial combined policy is least likely to carry.
And the exposures that come from being regulated. Abuse and molestation cover on the terms it is available, help towards the costs of a regulatory investigation, and management liability for the people running the home. Cyber matters more here than in most sectors, because a ransomware incident takes away access to medication records while the home is still full.
Where this page stops. This is about registered residential and nursing homes. Domiciliary care and supported living share many liabilities but a different premises exposure, and they are covered on our home care insurance page. And holding cover is never evidence of registration, permission or a safe service.
Not One Underwriting Conversation
Two homes with the same bed count and the same turnover can be completely different risks, and what separates them is what the staff are registered and trained to do. Four shapes, and the terms follow from which one you are.
Accommodation with personal care, without registered nursing. The exposures cluster around falls, moving and handling, scalding, choking and supervision rather than clinical treatment. Residential care home insurance is the lightest of the four on treatment liability and, proportionally, the heaviest on employers’ liability.
Registered nurses raise a question nothing else on this site does. Nurses must have an appropriate professional indemnity arrangement in place to practise, and the NMC notes that staff of private healthcare organisations are likely to be relying on their employer’s. That makes your treatment liability cover their registration issue too.
Where capacity, restraint and deprivation of liberty become central. Consent, best-interest decisions, window and environmental controls and residents who try to leave are all underwriting questions as well as regulatory ones. It is the group with the heaviest enforcement record, and the one where an insurer asks to see the risk assessments.
A second home changes the shape of the risk rather than doubling it: portfolio values, group-wide aggregation, one management structure answering for several registrations. Care provider insurance for a group is a programme, not a renewal. Charitable operators sit here too — charity cover is not a care programme.
If you are not sure which of the four describes you, that is the conversation rather than a complication — a home with a nursing wing and a dementia unit is genuinely two of them, and most operators drift from one into another without ever deciding to.
Regulation, Not Just Liability
No law requires you to buy care home insurance. Employers’ liability is the main compulsory exception and motor cover applies to vehicles on a road. What is heavily regulated is the care. In England providers are registered with the Care Quality Commission under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and its 2014 Regulations; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own regulators and regimes.
Regulation 12, safe care and treatment, is the one to understand. CQC can prosecute a failure that causes avoidable harm or exposes a resident to a significant risk of it, without first issuing a Warning Notice, and the maximum fine for serious quality and safety offences is unlimited. Death is not a precondition. Regulation 11 on consent and Regulation 13 on safeguarding work the same way.
The enforcement record is local. Premier Care Homes Ltd was ordered to pay £47,681 over the care of a resident at risk of falls at Picktree Court in Chester-le-Street. Three patterns recur: costs can exceed the fine, individuals are prosecuted alongside companies — two registered managers fined personally in the cases above — and in February 2026 a provider was fined for a duty of candour breach after an incident, not for the incident.
And it is not only CQC. Health and safety law reaches directors personally under section 37; HSE treats moving and handling as the sector’s defining risk and advises restricting windows where a risk assessment identifies someone at risk. RIDDOR and CQC notification are separate regimes. Deprivation of liberty changed on 2 June 2026 and DoLS still applies, so any policy written before then needs reviewing.
What insurance cannot do. It does not transfer your regulatory responsibilities and it cannot make an unsafe service compliant. Nobody should tell you a regulatory fine is insured. A well-arranged programme protects the organisation financially when something happens; risk management makes it less likely to happen.
If that reads as a long list of things that can go wrong, it is the right list — and it is why an operator who can answer an underwriter’s questions properly ends up in a materially better position than one who cannot.
Confirm, Do Not Assume
These four are routinely assumed into a care programme and routinely are not in it. Each is a question with a written answer.
General public liability wording is not enough here. Get written confirmation of what is covered, what is excluded, how historical allegations are treated, and exactly which persons are protected — the company, the registered manager, employees, agency staff. An allegation generates costs and an investigation long before culpability is settled.
Ask which section answers for the delivery of care itself — medication, nursing, pressure-area management, moving and handling — and whether it is a treatment liability extension, a malpractice section or a separate professional indemnity policy. On a policy written for a business that never touches its customers, this is the commonest gap.
An inspection, a safeguarding enquiry and an inquest are not claims, and they arrive long before one. Establish what the wording provides towards legal representation and investigation costs, and what it does not. The useful question is narrow: what help do I actually have, in writing, on the day a notice arrives?
Turnover-based business interruption does not fit a care home. The cost after a loss is relocating residents, agency cover and an occupancy level that takes far longer to rebuild than the building. A suspension of admissions does the same damage with no physical loss at all. See property owners for the building side.
Four questions, four written answers. Most programmes we review answer two of them. If yours answers all four it is in good order and we will tell you so, which is a short conversation and a useful one either way.
The Fact-Find
This sector cannot be rated on turnover and headcount. Care home business insurance is priced on the operation.
Residential, nursing or both; the regulated activities; the latest CQC rating and any enforcement action, condition or embargo; homes and registered beds; occupancy; and contracts with local authorities or NHS commissioners, which carry their own insurance requirements. None of it is negotiable and all of it is already written down somewhere.
Dependency levels, dementia, learning disability and mental health provision, falls history, pressure-ulcer claims, oxygen and smoking, and residents who try to leave. Then capacity and deprivation of liberty procedures, and whether they have been reviewed since June 2026. Care business insurance rated without this is rated for a different home.
Permanent against agency and bank staff, overnight cover, ratios, whether registered nurses are employed, and DBS checks extending to contractors and volunteers. Recruitment is an insurance question here, not an HR one — a barred person in a regulated role is a criminal matter for the organisation, not just a bad hire.
Rebuild value and specialist equipment; the fire-risk assessment and evacuation plan, which in a home where residents cannot self-evacuate is a very different document from an office’s; hoist and lifting examination records; window restrictors; medicines and controlled drugs; and any minibus or resident transport.
The answer that changes most often and gets reported least is the dependency mix. A home does not decide to become a dementia specialist — it admits residents, they get frailer, and two years later the operation is not the one that was rated. The same goes for a new unit, a commissioned contract or a minibus. A proper review once a year, plus a call whenever the service changes, is the whole of the maintenance this needs — and it is cheaper than finding out at claim stage.
Named People, Not a Call Centre
A regulated client needs to know who is answering the phone, because the questions are not generic and nor are the deadlines. These are the people you deal with, and the first conversation is usually with one of the account people below.
Ian Cooke has thirty-four years in the industry, leads the internal team and owns compliance at Park. On a regulated client he is the one who will want to see the registration, the rating and the risk assessments before anything is quoted, because here those documents are the submission. Donna Hall brings over thirty years and leads new client work. Paula Hunter looks after a full range of commercial clients and works closely with the team on renewals, which is the relevant part: a care programme is rarely right at the first renewal and is usually put right over two.
Colin Thompson is our Claims Manager, with over eighteen years in the role. A care claim is unlike any other on this site — it can involve a resident who cannot give an account of what happened, a family, a regulator and a local authority, all on different timetables. Claims are handled in house, and the rest of the team is on our team page.
Care Home Insurance Enquiry
Park is an independent care home insurance broker in Durham, arranging cover for residential, nursing and specialist homes across the North East and UK-wide. Seven questions and an optional upload. The three answers that decide the most are what you are registered for, who you care for and how you are staffed — a care insurance quote written without those is a quote for a different home. Send your schedule and registration details if you have them. One working day, no fee, and if what you hold is right we will say so.
Common Questions
A programme rather than a package: buildings, contents and specialist equipment, employers’ liability for care and support staff, public and products liability, treatment liability or medical malpractice where care and medication are delivered, abuse and safeguarding cover, management liability, cyber for resident records, fidelity where residents’ money is handled, and continuity cover sized against relocating residents rather than lost profit. Which of those you need is decided by what you are registered for and who you care for.
Not as a product. No law requires you to buy something called care home insurance. Employers’ liability is compulsory for most employers and motor cover applies to vehicles on a road; beyond that the obligations follow the activity — employment, premises, food, data protection and fire safety. What is a legal requirement is registration with the regulator and compliance with its standards, and no policy is a substitute for either.
Be wary of anyone who tells you it does. Whether legal costs, investigation costs or particular liabilities are covered depends on the individual policy wording and on what the law allows, and a regulatory penalty is a different thing from a civil claim. The useful question, worth answering in writing before you need it, is what your policy provides towards legal representation and the costs of a regulatory investigation.
Yes, and the difference is clinical rather than commercial. A nursing home employs registered nurses, which brings treatment liability and medical malpractice to the centre of the programme. It also raises something a residential home does not: nurses must have an appropriate professional indemnity arrangement in place to practise, and the NMC notes that staff of private healthcare organisations are likely to be relying on their employer’s.
Do not assume so. General public liability wording is not enough, and it needs express confirmation in writing — what is covered, what is excluded, how historical allegations are treated, and exactly which persons are protected, including the registered manager and agency staff. It is the single most important thing to have in writing rather than in principle on a care account.
It has happened more than once. After a resident died falling from an inadequately restricted window the company was fined £16,500 and its registered manager £1,000; in a case concerning pressure-area failings the provider was fined £40,000 and the manager £750. Section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 also reaches directors and managers personally. That is why management liability belongs in a care programme.
Not on turnover alone, which is how it is usually done and why it usually falls short. The real cost after a serious loss is relocating residents, agency cover and an occupancy level that takes far longer to recover than the building does, and a suspension of admissions can do the same damage with no physical loss at all. The indemnity period and the sums insured both need to reflect that.
Usually a related conversation and rarely the same rating. Domiciliary care, home care and supported living share many liabilities with a residential home, but the premises exposure and the regulated activities differ, and care delivered in somebody else’s house raises questions a building-based service does not. If you operate both, say so at the outset. In the meantime please call us on 0191 378 7100.
