{"id":4134,"date":"2024-05-10T13:58:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T12:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.policybee.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4134"},"modified":"2025-04-29T11:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T10:53:09","slug":"what-does-negligence-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.policybee.co.uk\/blog\/what-does-negligence-mean","title":{"rendered":"What does negligence mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\"Negligence<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If you are, or have been, looking around for professional indemnity (PI) insurance<\/a>, it\u2019s likely you\u2019ve come across the term ‘negligence’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may even be able to quote it as one of the reasons for having PI in the first place. Professional indemnity cover exists to ‘protect you against claims of negligence\u2019, after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While that\u2019s certainly true, in typical insurance-industry style, it\u2019s not always made clear what that actually means. So, what exactly is \u2018negligence\u2019? And why do you need protection from claims of it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Negligence explained<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As a professional person, you have a duty of care<\/a> to your clients (both legally and morally). You have a responsibility not to cause damage to others that could reasonably be foreseen and avoided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your client is paying for better-than-the-average-man-in-the-street levels of expertise in your particular field. If your professional service fails to deliver what they wanted, or worse, damages them or their business, they can sue you for their losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in the context of professional indemnity insurance, negligence means a failure to carry out the duty of care you owe your client (with that failure causing them financial loss). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Damage your client suffers as a result of your work could<\/em> and should<\/em> have been reasonably avoided by you. If that\u2019s not the case, you\u2019re deemed to have been negligent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bring on the lawyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Negligence examples<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now we’ve got a good idea of what negligence is, the next obvious question to answer is: how does it manifest itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you might imagine, it\u2019s a broad term and covers a wide range of possible circumstances. Arguably, there are as many different examples of negligence as there are professions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For ease of understanding, we broadly define negligence as \u2018a mistake you\u2019ve made or something you failed to do\u2019. Those words are dotted around our website if you think they sound familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples include a management consultant\u2019s bad advice, a web developer\u2019s coding error or an architect\u2019s incorrect design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What else? Well, as it\u2019s professional indemnity insurance that covers claims of negligence, it\u2019s worth looking at a few policy wordings to see what’s covered. These things, for starters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n