Hiring out your hall

If you own a guiding venue, you might want to hire it out to other groups, organisations or people.

Our public liability insurance covers your building when it's used for guiding activities, but it doesn't cover other hirers and you can't add anyone to it. So it's important you get proof of public liability insurance and complete a hirer's agreement when you hire to any other groups or individuals. 

What cover should they have?

We recommend that you only accept bookings that have public liability insurance cover of  £5 million or more with a reputable provider.

If you have any questions about the insurance company, you can check the Financial Services Register.

If their insurance cover is under £5 million, you can risk assess the situation and decide if you are happy with their level of cover. 

You also need to check that your other insurance policies allow you to hire out the property to non-guiding groups.

Why do they need to be covered?

If someone hiring your space, who wasn't a Girlguiding member, caused damage to the building or another person, you would need to claim against their insurance as that would not be covered by our insurance policy. So you need to make sure that their insurance is sufficient to meet any claim, otherwise, you could be left out of pocket.

You might want to consider different levels for different hirers, for example, a knitting group might cause less damage than a birthday party. You can risk assess this and then decide.

What happens if they don't have public liability insurance?

If they don't already have any public liability insurance then they need to arrange it or take the liability themselves.

Private hirers might be able to arrange insurance as part of their household policy for a party or one-off event.

If you go ahead with the hire, you should make the hirer aware that by signing the agreement, they are entering into a contract with you and failure to have a public liability insurance policy would be a breach of contract and a claim could be made against them directly.

What is a hirer’s agreement?

This is a contract between the property and the person or group hiring your premises. It contains details of how they will use the building and outlines their responsibilities.

The hirer's agreement form has two parts

• Part A - sets out the time, dates and costs of the hire for your records.
• Part B – asks the hirer to agree that they will indemnify you for damage or injury. This means that they will either pay the costs of repair or will pay compensation for the damage and/or injury. 

You don’t need to complete part B if you are hiring to other Girlguiding groups but it must be agreed for everyone else this. The form asks the hirer to confirm that they have public liability insurance in place to cover the costs and compensation up to £5 million.

What should I do with this form?

You need to complete two copies of the form and then you and the hirer should sign and date both copies. You should keep a copy for your records, and the person hiring the building also gets to keep a copy.

Store your copies of the forms securely and in line with the Data Protection Act. You need to keep them for three years after the agreement has ended.