Checking Stallholder Documents: A Host's Guide to Vetting Vendors

Why checking documents protects you, not just them

It is tempting to treat document checks as a box-ticking exercise, or to skip them for traders you know. Two reasons to resist that.

First, your own insurance may depend on it. Host public liability policies often assume you have taken reasonable steps to ensure traders are insured. If a claim arises from an uninsured stall and you never asked for evidence, you may find your insurer asking difficult questions at exactly the wrong moment.

Second, it protects your reputation. An event where a visitor is hurt by an uninsured trader becomes your story locally, not the trader's. Being able to show you ran a proper process is the difference between an unfortunate incident and a negligent one.

None of this means treating stallholders with suspicion. Good traders carry these documents anyway and are used to being asked. Many will think better of your event for asking; it signals that the fair is properly run and that they will be trading alongside other vetted stalls.

The baseline: what to ask every stallholder for

For a standard craft stall, the baseline is short:

• A current public liability insurance certificate. Most hosts require a minimum of £5 million cover; some venues or councils specify £10 million, so check your venue hire terms and licence conditions before setting your figure.
• Product liability cover if they sell physical products, which at a craft fair is nearly everyone. It is usually bundled with public liability in craft policies, and the certificate will say so.

That is it for most stalls. Ask for the certificate itself, not a tick in a box that says "I have insurance." A certificate shows the policyholder name, the cover level, and the policy dates, which are the three things you actually need to check.

Extra documents for food and drink stalls

Anyone selling food or drink should be able to show:

• Evidence of food business registration with their local authority. Registration is free and required at least 28 days before trading; a confirmation email or letter is fine as evidence.
• Their food hygiene rating. Ratings run from 0 to 5 under the Food Standards Agency scheme. Displaying the rating is mandatory in Wales and Northern Ireland and voluntary (but normal) in England. You can verify any rating yourself on the FSA website in about a minute.
• Allergen information for what they sell. You do not need to audit their labels, but a trader who looks blank when you mention allergens is a warning sign; correct allergen handling has been mandatory for years.

If a food trader cooks on site with LPG gas, also ask for a current gas safety inspection certificate for their equipment from a suitably registered engineer, and check your venue allows gas appliances at all before you accept the booking.

Extra documents for specific setups

Beyond food, let the stall type drive the paperwork:

• Mains electricity at their stall (lights, card machines on charge, heat guns, urns): ask for PAT test records for the equipment they are bringing. Strictly speaking the law requires electrical equipment to be maintained safely rather than requiring a PAT certificate as such, but test records are the accepted evidence, and most venues insist on them.
• Staff or helpers who are employees: employers' liability insurance is a legal requirement for employers, with a minimum of £5 million cover. A genuinely casual unpaid friend helping out usually does not trigger it, but paid helpers generally do.
• Larger or more hazardous setups (gazebos in exposed locations, demonstrations, equipment the public can touch): a short risk assessment for their stall. Traders with five or more employees must have written risk assessments anyway; for smaller traders a one-page stall risk assessment is a reasonable ask, and plenty of insurers provide templates.

Resist the urge to ask everyone for everything. A jewellery stall with no electrics does not need a PAT record, and demanding one just adds friction for no safety benefit.

How to actually check a certificate

A document is only worth something if you look at it. For each certificate:

• 1. Check the name matches the person or business trading at your event. A certificate in someone else's name, or a business name that does not match their stall, needs explaining.
• 2. Check the dates. The policy must be in force on your event date, not just today. A certificate that expires the week before your fair is a diary problem waiting to happen; note the expiry and chase a renewal copy.
• 3. Check the cover level meets your stated minimum. If you require £5 million and the certificate says £2 million, that is a conversation, not a technicality.
• 4. Check what the policy actually covers. Some policies exclude specific activities such as food preparation or the use of gas. The certificate usually will not show exclusions in detail, so for higher-risk stalls it is reasonable to ask the trader to confirm their policy covers the activity.

If anything feels off, you can ask the trader to get written confirmation of cover from their insurer or broker. Genuine traders can do this easily; it is a normal request.

A sensible tiering that keeps traders on side

You want an event that is safe and defensible without burying small traders in admin. A three-tier approach works well:

• Must have (no document, no pitch): current public liability certificate at your required level; food registration and hygiene rating for food stalls; gas safety certificate where gas is used; employers' liability where they have employees.
• Should have (ask for it, chase it, use judgement): PAT records where they bring mains electrics; a stall risk assessment for anything beyond a table and a tablecloth.
• Good to have (welcome, not required): product photos and stall photos for curation, references from other organisers, membership of a makers' guild or association.

Put your requirements in writing at the point of booking, including the cover level and the deadline for sending documents. Most disputes about paperwork happen because the requirement arrived two days before the event; almost none happen when it was in the booking terms.

Red flags worth pausing on

Most stallholders are exactly who they say they are. Occasionally something warrants a closer look:

• Reluctance to provide a certificate, or repeated promises that it is coming. Genuine certificates take minutes to send.
• A certificate that looks edited: mismatched fonts, odd alignment, a renewal date that has clearly been typed over. Insurers will confirm cover if you ask.
• Cover that lapsed and was renewed the day after you asked. Not disqualifying on its own (people do forget renewals), but check the new policy is genuinely in force.
• A food stall with no registration and no idea what you mean. Registration is free and takes minutes; a trader who has not done it either started yesterday or has chosen not to.
• Wildly cheap cover for a high-risk activity. A hot food trader with bottom-tier cover that excludes catering has insurance in name only.

One red flag is a conversation. Several together are usually a no, however lovely the products look.

Keeping track of it all

The hard part of vetting is rarely the checking; it is the chasing and the filing. Documents arrive by email, Facebook message, WhatsApp photo, and occasionally on paper at the gate. Six weeks later you cannot remember who has sent what, and you are re-asking people who already sent theirs, which is exactly the kind of communication that frustrates good traders.

Whatever system you use, it needs three things:

• 1. One place where every trader's documents live, not four inboxes.
• 2. Visibility of expiry dates, so a policy lapsing between booking and event date gets caught.
• 3. A record you can show afterwards, so if anyone ever asks what checks you did, the answer takes thirty seconds.

A spreadsheet and a folder of PDFs can do this if you are disciplined. It just tends to be the first thing that slips when you are also juggling the venue, the layout, and the weather forecast.