Specialist environmental schemes provider, Oil Spill Insurance Services, has teamed up with Touchstone Underwriting to develop an environmental insurance policy for commercial above ground oil storage tanks -- of which there are over one million in Great Britain.

Workspill provides specialist emergency response to minimise environmental damage, provide cover for statutory clean-up costs and third party liability including legal defence costs in the event of an oil spill from an insured tank.

Judy Hadden of Oil Spill Insurance Services comments: “If a business owns or operates an oil storage tank, they most certainly have an environmental liability risk. Most business insurance policies do not cover environmental damage and the resultant clean-up costs following a spill from an oil or fuel tank, particularly if such damage is caused by a gradual event such as a leaking underground pipe”.

Among the most common causes of pollution in the UK, around 3,000 pollution incidents involving oil and fuels are reported to the environmental regulators each year, and if a spill from an oil tank causes or threatens to cause environmental damage there is a strict liability under environmental law to clean it up.

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