Income Protection For Lighting And Rigging Technicians

This is the thing most freelance crew get wrong when buying cover, and it causes problems at claim rather than at purchase.

Festival and touring work concentrates earnings into part of the year. Somebody may earn most of an annual income between April and September and very little in January. Insuring a figure based on the busy months looks sensible and is not supportable, because benefit is normally measured against actual earnings.

So the figure to protect is a defensible annual total from accounts, averaged across the whole year. The flip side matters too: being signed off in July costs several times what the same six weeks would cost in winter, which argues for a shorter deferred period than the annual average alone would suggest.

Overnight turnarounds, long runs and touring produce a pattern of sleep disruption that is part of the job rather than a personal choice.

The consequences are twofold. There is the immediate one, where fatigue contributes directly to accidents involving height and suspended loads. And there is the cumulative one, where disrupted sleep is associated with effects on weight, blood pressure and mental health, all of which appear on an application as conditions in their own right.

Declare them properly rather than as part of the industry. Our pages on insomnia and on depression and anxiety cover what we would ask, and the gradual nature of all this is a reason to arrange cover earlier in a career rather than later.

Freelance crew have no death in service, and the industry is built on freelancers.

There is also no business to realise. A rigger's assets are their tickets, their tools and their reputation, and the last of those does not survive them.

So the sum worth covering is the mortgage or rent commitment, any finance, and the years of income a household would need, sized against a genuine annual figure rather than a good season.

The event that ends this career is usually a fall or a crush injury, and the survivable version frequently rules out height work permanently.

That leaves somebody employable and out of the industry they trained in, with a large and permanent drop in rate.

A lump sum funds a move the experience supports: production management, technical design and plotting, warehouse and prep management, or training and assessment. All of them take time to establish.