Legal Advice Hub for Care and Medical Businesses

The standard cost for a year’s membership to this hub is £189, however this is included as part of your policy with us.

There are several benefits the Markel Law Hub can offer to you and your business, including:

• Knowledge and experience – specific to your business sector
• Cost savings – avoid expensive legal bills by utilising their templates
• Easy access – access anytime, from any device
• Plain English – accessible, understandable and digestible

Covid-19 legal advice for your care or medical business

The Markel Law Hub also offers Covid-19 guidance. It provides access to Covid-19 resources including legal documents and up-to-date guides relevant to employers due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Specialist legal advice hub for care professionals

The hub offers specialist service to caring professionals, from issues regarding health and safety to cyber security. You have access to a wide range of guidance materials and documents including:

• Data protection
• Claims queries
• Company law
• Debt collection
• Licensing
• Performance reviews
• Intellectual property
• Grievances
• Disability discrimination
• Disciplinary action

Employee handbook for care and medical businesses

With the Markel Law Hub you have access to tailor your employee handbook to meet your needs and therefore you can outline what is expected from employees in relation to their contract.

If for example an employee keeps taking time off work and is often late due to personal issues, although you may be sympathetic it is also impacting your business and employees have started to complain. 

You can find all the documentation on the hub needed to record the meetings with the employee, as well as downloadable fact sheets to advise you on employment law and ensure you are meeting your obligations as an employer. If you eventually need to discipline said employee for their behaviour you have access to all the templates you need to help you with this problem whilst reducing the risk of ending up in an employment tribunal at a later date.

With the Markel Law Hub, you are provided with all the materials and templates you need to create  an employee handbook without paying the standard fee. It isn’t just templates for an employee handbook which is available from the Markel Law Hub, there are other legal templates available to tailor to your needs. This includes 1,200 fact sheets and legal documents to choose from, including the following key areas:

• Employment law – helps with key issues that may rise in employment relationships, and includes regular blog posts to keep you up to date on legal developments
• Business law – notes covering key issues that could potentially arise in your business including going to court, dealing with defamation, property matters, and business disputed
• Health and safety law – legal documents including forms, checklists and policies, as well as the latest health and safety news as it happens
• Data protection – with the rise in cybercrime data protection is now more important than it ever has been before. The content on the Law Hub can help ensure that both you and your business stay compliant with GDPR and data protection law.

Cyber crime and Covid-19

With the coronavirus outbreak, cyber insurance is now more important than ever. We have seen how quickly this pandemic has brought the world to a standstill. A virtual virus can spread even quicker and can impact national and global networks that we are reliant upon.

A recent report by TSB Bank plc conducted in April found that 42% of people suspected they had been the target of phishing attacks during the COVID-19 outbreak. Scammers often imitate official bodies such as governments, the NHS and even the World Health Organisation. They claim to be able to provide the recipient with details related to Covid-19 such as a list of infected people in their region. In order to access this information the victim needs to click on the link which may lead to a malicious website, or be asked to pay ransom in Bitcoin.

Protecting your business against cyber crime

There are a number of things you can do to help protect yourself from cybercrime:

• Be extra vigilant with emails and texts. If something doesn’t look right, no matter who it’s from, don’t click on any of the content. Use an alternative way to contact that person or company to verify its legitimacy.
• Report suspicious Coronavirus-related phishing scams to report@phishing.gov.uk (set up by GCHQ in April 2020).
• Ensure you follow your standard processes correctly especially when authorising payments and processing data etc.
• If you are using video conferencing or other online platforms to stay connected with colleagues or clients (e.g. in the form of counselling), ensure you track who is joining calls. Don’t make any meetings public or post joining links on public forums.
• Regularly change passwords across all devices and online platforms – use strong unique passwords that are not easy to guess and are different to any previous passwords.

Professional indemnity care insurance from Towergate

We can offer professional indemnity insurance policies for therapists, trainers, counsellors and hundreds of other care and medical professions, meaning you can be confident you have the right cover. We can also source discounts for many of our customers who belong to professional organisations and industry bodies.

With your Towergate professional indemnity care insurance you also receive the Markel Law Hub for free.

About the author

Carolyn Baker-Mellor is a respected industry leader with over 35 years' experience within the care insurance sector. She works across a wide spectrum of insurance product and policy development, delivery and optimisation for care industry clients, including managing global corporate accounts, working closely with trade associations, and helping clients in protecting their businesses and personal assets. Her areas of expertise within the sector include care homes, nurseries, domiciliary care, hospices and charities.

Carolyn currently works at Towergate as Head of Care Insurance. Towergate is the UK’s leading independent insurance broking platform and forms part of the Ardonagh Group, an international network of over 100 offices and 7,000 people which incorporates leading brands in both Lloyd’s of London and global markets.

She previously worked for 10 years at Aon as a director, client services leader and assistant director for claims.