If a lorry is stolen from your yard, who is liable?

Every landowner who thinks about letting space to lorries arrives at the same question, usually within about a minute. What happens if one gets stolen, or if somebody gets hurt on my land? It is the right question to ask. The answer is more reassuring than most people expect, but it only holds if the arrangement is set up properly, and the part people worry about is rarely the part that carries the risk.

What follows is general information to help you ask your insurer and your solicitor better questions. It is not legal or insurance advice and does not replace either.

Letting someone park is usually a licence, not custody

English law draws a line between letting someone park on your land and taking custody of their property. The first is a licence. The second is a bailment, and a bailee does owe duties for goods in its care.

The leading case is nearly ninety years old and is still the starting point. In Ashby v Tolhurst, decided by the Court of Appeal in 1937, a driver left his car on a car park, paid the fee and kept his keys. The car was stolen. The court held that the relationship between the car park proprietors and the driver was that of licensor and licensee, not bailor and bailee, and the proprietors were not liable for the loss.

The keys matter because they stand for control. If the driver keeps them and you never take possession of the vehicle, you have let a space rather than accepted custody of a lorry. That is the ordinary yard arrangement, and it is why letting parking is not the same business as running a storage depot.

It does turn on the facts. If you hold keys so units can be shunted, if you sign for loads, if you move trailers about yourself, you are drifting towards custody and away from a simple licence. Decide which business you are in and be consistent about it.

What you do owe is a duty to people

The liability that actually bites is not the lorry. It is the yard.

Section 2 of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 gives every occupier of premises what it calls the common duty of care, owed to all visitors. The Act describes it as a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that the visitor will be reasonably safe in using the premises for the purposes for which he is invited or permitted to be there.

In a yard that means the surface, the lighting, the reversing area, whatever is stacked along the edges, the gate, and the hole that has been there since February. A driver walking back from the gate at two in the morning is a visitor. This is the exposure worth spending money on, and it is almost entirely within your control.

The sign does less than people think

Nearly every yard has one. Vehicles left at owner's risk. It is worth having. It is not a force field.

Section 2 of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 says a person cannot exclude or restrict liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence by reference to any contract term or to a notice. For other loss or damage caused by negligence, a term or notice only works if it satisfies the requirement of reasonableness.

So the sign can help with the lorry. It cannot help if somebody is hurt because the yard was badly kept. And a notice the driver first reads after he has already parked is doing less work than the same words agreed before he arrives.

Which insurance is actually compulsory

Employers' liability is the compulsory one. Gov.uk is direct about it. You must get employers' liability insurance as soon as you become an employer, the policy must cover you for at least £5 million and come from an authorised insurer, and you can be fined £2,500 for each day you are uninsured. It does not apply if you only employ a family member.

Public liability insurance is not required by law. It is, however, the policy that answers a common duty of care claim, which is the claim a yard is most likely to face.

The most important point on this page is simpler than either. Tell your existing insurer what the land is now used for. A policy written for an empty yard or a working farm may not contemplate third party HGVs standing on it overnight. Cover you have not declared a material change to is not cover you can lean on, and finding that out after an incident is the expensive way to learn it.

Write the arrangement down

A short written agreement does more than any sign. Who may park, which vehicles, access hours, whether keys stay with the driver, what you do not accept responsibility for, and what happens to a vehicle that is left behind. Plain English is fine.

It is also worth remembering that the operator on the other side is not uninsured. Motor insurance is compulsory for anything on the road and goods in transit cover is standard in haulage. The lorry and its load are already somebody's responsibility, and that somebody is not you.

The honest summary

In the ordinary arrangement, where you let a space and the driver keeps his keys, you are not the insurer of somebody else's lorry. What you are responsible for is the condition of your land and the safety of the people on it. That is a maintenance job, a conversation with your insurer and a page of writing. It is not an open ended risk, and it should not be the reason a usable yard sits empty all winter.

If you have a yard with room on it, listing it takes a few minutes and is free to use for your first 12 months. Put it on HGV-Parking.co.uk and see what the demand looks like before you commit to anything.