The Provision of Services Regulations 2009
January 2010
The Provision of Services Regulations 2009 came into force on 28 December 2009 and accountants, solicitors and other ‘service providers’ should now be complying.
The regulations implement the European Directive on Services in the Internal Market (2006/123/EC) and a useful guide is provided by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills at:
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file53100.pdf
Included in a long list of information that must always be made available to recipients of your services is a requirement that:-
Where the service provider has compulsory professional indemnity insurance, information about the insurance and in particular;-
- The contact details of the insurer, and
- The territorial coverage of the insurance must be provided.
Regulation 8(2) requires that you make this information available in any of the following ways:
- Supply it to the recipient on your own initiative
- Make it easily accessible to the recipient at the place where the service is provided or the contract concluded, for example, at your premises
- Make it easily accessible by the recipient electronically by means of an address you supply, for example, by providing the exact address of where the information can be found on a publicly available website
- Include it in any information documents that you supply to the recipient which set out a detailed description of the service you provide.
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills guide states that “we would not expect to see full details of the insurance held.”
Many solicitors have already complied with the regulations and have posted details on web sites. We know that some firms have stated their policy number and even the limit of indemnity applying. Revealing your levels of cover might be misleading however without the recipient having knowledge of how PII policies work in practice.
Zurich has suggested that their solicitor clients use a statement such as:-
"In accordance with the disclosure requirements of The Provision of Services Regulations 2009, our professional indemnity insurer is XYZ PLC
Address: ...
The territorial coverage of our policy is worldwide.”
Other insurers may take a different view and it would be wise for professionals to check proposed disclosure statements and modes of communication with your Insurer beforehand.
E Mail pi@ntegrity.co.uk