The Lemon Fool

Sposin'... the village hall about which I posted a while ago... the current situation is that a local land owner owns the land and the Parish Council leases the land and owns maintains and operates the hall including renting it out to a number of local groups.... Girl Guides, school playgroup and such.

Does the land owner have any potential liability that should be insured? I expect the terms of the lease shuffle any liability onto the Parish Council, so perhaps its contingent liability I'm thinking of here.

I ask because I'm still pondering the merits and pitfalls of trying to buy the freehold of the land.
Assuming the land owner will sell it to me, that is.

The merit is that I could give the PC security of tenure, which under the current lease they do not have.
Are there pitfalls...?

V8

Not convinced, think will very much depend on the lease and your brokers may strongly insist you also cover yourself with a policy.

We lease some land for parking to our tenants. An individual wandered through it last year(uninvited and stepping over chains between bollards) , tripped apparently because of a sunken sett, and is now suing us (or rather our insurers re our property portfolio are dealing with it on our behalf)

The claim investigator appointed by the insurers when I met him a couple of weeks ago kept mentioning the Occupiers Liability Act (we are in Scotland but no doubt this/similar is something that also bites in rUK)

I would take professional advice so you have someone to sue if the worst happens.

Does the Parish Council maintain and do a risk analysis?

https://www.icaew.com/library/subject-g ... %20them%27.

Occupiers should carry out regular risk assessments to identify reasonably foreseeable activities on their properties - even unlawful activities such as trespass - and carry out inspections and maintenance to ensure there are no defects that could breach their duties to trespassers.