Insurance for Hosts

My insurance company charges me 300 euro per year for wwoofer insurance. At first I was told that my public liability would cover them since they were voluntary workers but then they started regarding them differently. My employer liability would not cover them since they are not employees so I had no option but to pay up and look cheerful. The insurance company's argument with regard to not covering them under the public liability as voluntary workers was that the wwoofers would in general have no farming experience and so would be more likely to have an accident. The usual voluntary worker on a farm would be a family member or a neighbour that would have more experience.

A lot of wwoofers that I come across do not have specific accident insurance. They have medical insurance alright but that does not take the liability off the host in case of an accident.

I think a lot of hosts do not realise that they might need specific insurance to cover them in case of accident. My own insurance company had never heard of wwoofing so obviously they had not covered the risk before.

To sum up I think that no matter what the cost of the premium you are better off having proper insurance that covers the risk otherwise you could end up loosing your farm or house!!. After all the insurance companies make the rules. I would like to hear other hosts thoughts on this matter as it is SO important.

I have finally gotten my insurance company to clarify why they are charging me 200 euro for wwoofers. My house insurance covers any work done for our private home but as soon as anything is done for the business employers insurance is required. As most of us work from and at our homes it will be extremely difficult to seperate the two.I am still arguing the point with them however as they just quoted 200 euro without asking about what tasks people would be performing or if they had their own personal insurance.

In my experience, if you ask any insurer "is this... included", they always say no, unless it is a very common risk. Therefore, I would suggest to read the small print of any insurance policy before contacting them, and see whether one can reasonably interpret it to cover woofers.
E.g. most house insurance policies cover 'domestic employees', which one could read to cover work in the garden as well, but the story will be different if you are selling garden produce.
Unfortunately, woofer's accident insurance, though a good thing in itself, can make things worse for hosts, as all insurances try to find a 3rd party culprit in case of a claim. They will pay the woofer, but may take regress on the host. Has anyone experience with cases like this?
I believe the best way forward here is a group insurance for hosts. These usually work out half price or less compared to individual non-standard policies.

Up until now my wwoofers have been using OVEuropa insurance which covered 3rd party Liability (I thought).However thats gone now and the two volunteer travel insurances reccommended do not deal with 3rd party. What to do.?

Hi Theresa
Thanks for your comments on this.
It seems that OVEuropa is coming back again, with a few minor changes, but still with the same public liability cover. We are just making some checks on extra payments that some people seem to have been made before we recommend it again. Also there are other specialist WWOOF insurances being developed, and as soon as we have further information on these, it will be posted on the site.