Caravan insurance when with dealer for work

Use a mobile workshop approved  engineer 

Find another dealership.

It is warranty work so I need to use the dealer I bought from.

My understanding is as long as it is done by a workshop approved engineer or dealer you are still covered 

The website of your caravan manufacturer should list dealers,  workshops and mobile techs authorised to carry out warranty work.

The United Kingdom is divided into three distinct legal jurisdictions: England and Wales; Northern Ireland and Scotland.  In none of those jurisdictions can you sign away your legal rights.  In this case those rights include being able to recover damages from a trader with whom you place your vehicle for professional work.  It is the traders’ choice as to whether he has insurance to cover any damages he may have to pay for his negligence; if not he will have to pay from his own funds. 

Attempting to have you sign a waiver and accept the insurance responsibility yourself is quite possibly illegal but I’m not aware of any test case or case law. 

I you feel forced to use their services you can IMO sign the document with reasonable certainty that you are signing a document of no worth to the trader.  However if something goes wrong and you need to make a claim it will almost certainly have to go to court.  You can also be fairly certain that the court will take a very dim view of the trader trying to get you to waive your rights. 

With regard to their request for you to remove your personnel items that is IMO reasonable but if you leave them in the van they should be covered by you and / or your insurance. 

I hope that helps but in your position I would try to use another trader as others have said. 

There may well be a misunderstanding in play here.

The dealers may be referring to loss or damage NOT caused by themselves and not as a result of their negligence, much in the same way that storage facilities put the onus on insuring loss or damage to your unit back on the owner. 

I agree wholeheartedly with LLM if the dealer is trying to negate his legal responsibility and will almost certainly have Public Liability cover incorporated into his overall commercial insurance policy, covering things such as Fire, Theft and Employers Liability etc.etc. It doesn't matter what he says in any contract that he gets you to sign.  If he or his staff could be held legally liable for loss of or damage to your unit then his Public Liability insurance will provide cover.

When we leave our caravan at the workshop we are always asked to leave a hitch lock. If the workshop do not attach said Hitchcock and my unit is stolen then I'll be suing them for negligence.

Having said all of that it is quite common or used to be when I was involved in these matters for Motor Traders, Caravan Dealers and anyone else who had customers vehicles or units in their possession to include an item on their own Fire and Theft schedules to include "Customers Vehicles in their custody or control". Maybe these sort of common courtesy add ons are being Deleted User to save on costs. Long time since I was involved.

Our caravan insurance does in fact cover us when the caravan is left in any workshop premises providing one security device already notified to them is attached.

A good comment but I find it difficult to think of a situation where loss or damage to a customers property at a traders premises would not be the traders responsibility.  

Thanks , very useful thoughts.