Insurance
Insurance for sitters: your health, your liability, your travel and your things
As a housesitter, the homeowner’s insurance isn’t bought for you. What your own cover needs to reach on a sit, and what to ask before you go.
A week into a sit in the hills, the sitter slips on the wet back step carrying the bins and lands hard on a wrist.
The homeowner, on the phone from abroad, is kind and worried. Then they both stop: whose insurance is this?
Two places to look: the sitter’s own travel or health cover, and, if the homeowner is found legally responsible for the wet step, the liability part of the homeowner’s home insurance.
Why it goes wrong
It’s easy to assume the homeowner’s insurance covers anyone in their home. It’s bought for their home and their things, and whether it reaches you is up to its wording.
Your health, your own belongings, and harm you might cause are yours to look after.
Your health and your trip
If your sit is abroad, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) says the medical part of travel insurance “is possibly the single most important part”.
That’s because of “the potentially high cost of medical treatment and repatriation if you are injured or fall ill abroad”. And a health card isn’t the same thing.
The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) and the Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) give state healthcare in some countries.
But the ABI says “neither is an alternative to travel insurance as they won’t cover all medical costs or any repatriation back to the UK on medical grounds”.
Ask before you go:
- Does my policy cover a stay where I’m looking after someone’s home and animals?
- Am I covered for an injury from an animal I’m caring for, such as a bite or a fall while walking a dog?
- If I have to leave the sit early, does it cover changing my journey home?
Harm you might cause
Liability cover is insurance that pays if someone is hurt, or their things are damaged, and you’re found legally responsible. Some home insurance includes “some of your personal legal liabilities” (ABI).
Whether yours reaches damage you cause in someone else’s home is up to its wording, so ask:
- Does my personal liability cover reach damage I cause in a home that isn’t mine, while I’m staying there?
Your own things
Don’t count on the homeowner’s insurance for your things. The ABI says travel insurance “can cover you for lost or stolen baggage and personal possessions”.
It also suggests checking “whether your home contents insurance or your gadget insurance provides cover for belongings that you take overseas”. Ask:
- Are my laptop and phone covered in someone else’s home?
Under the agreement on Reputable Sitters
If you use another agreement, or none, check what yours says.
- Damage: you pay for damage you, or anyone you ask to do part of your job, cause carelessly or on purpose; each person staying with you pays for their own.Wear, breakdowns and genuine accidents are the homeowner’s.
- The vet: whatever the vet figure, an animal that needs a vet goes to the vet. Above the homeowner’s vet figure, don’t agree to more without their yes; if you do, that’s yours to pay.If the homeowner can’t be reached, the vet decides what the animal needs to be out of pain.What the vet does on the vet’s own authority to ease suffering, or to put an animal to sleep, is the homeowner’s to pay.
- If you call off, don’t turn up, or walk out without a reason in the agreement, you pay for comparable care the homeowner arranges instead, on receipts, up to the figure you both agreed.That figure is the most either of you could owe the other for care or a place to stay, if plans change.
- If the homeowner pays some of your travel: when you call off or don’t turn up, none of it is owed, and you pay back what’s been paid.When you walk out, the journey home and any changes aren’t owed, though anything already paid for them stays paid.
- Your own travel: your share of travel is yours.If the sit is called off or ends early, then beyond the part of your travel the homeowner agreed to cover, neither of you pays for the other’s own travel or plans.That includes flights or a booked trip.
- Your safety: the homeowner hands over a home that, as far as they know, is safe and fit to live in.And each of you tells the other at once about any danger you know of. The law expects the homeowner to take reasonable care that you’re reasonably safe in the home.The agreement sets no sum if you’re hurt; the ordinary law still applies.
How to talk about it
“I’ve got travel insurance that covers medical bills, but nothing if I break something, so let’s agree how we’d handle a breakage” is a fair thing to say before the sit, not after.
How it works on Reputable Sitters
Your agreement says who pays for what, in plain words both of you see before signing. It doesn’t sell, arrange or check insurance.
The legal bit
This is information, not legal advice. Your agreement binds the two of you; it can’t change what any insurer pays. Only your policy’s wording and your insurer can say what’s covered.
Where next
Tell us what we’ve got wrong: listening@reputablesitters.com
Information, not legal advice. Laws change, so check anything important with the official source linked on each page.
Free to read: no cookies, no tracking, nothing to sign up for.
Reputable Sitters Ltd, registered in England and Wales, no. 17032078. Registered office: 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ.
Building tools for housesitting, with AI help.