Income Protection for Plasterers
Plastering is the only trade on this site where the material sets whether you are ready or not.
Once a wall is on, the timings run: flatten, trowel, polish, all within a window that does not care how your wrist feels. You cannot do half a ceiling and finish it in the morning. That makes plastering unusually unforgiving of injury, because working at eighty per cent is not an option the material allows.
Income protection pays monthly while you cannot work, which for a self-employed plasterer is the only thing standing in for sick pay.
The short answer
Plastering is heavy, overhead and on a clock: once the plaster is on the wall it has to be finished before it goes off, so there is no slowing down and no coming back to it tomorrow. That makes it one of the few trades where you are either fully fit or not working at all. Income protection replaces a monthly amount while you cannot work, and a plasterer has no sick pay to fall back on.
What actually stops you working
- Wrist and forearm injuries, which stop trowel work instantly
- Shoulder damage from working ceilings and high walls overhead
- Back injuries from mixing, lifting bags and carrying boards
- Knee problems from floor screeding and working at low level
- Dermatitis and cement burns from prolonged contact with plaster and screed
- Falls from hop-ups, trestles and boards, which is where plasterers get hurt suddenly
Sick pay, if you get any
There is none if you are self-employed. Plastering is also usually priced by the job or the square metre, so you are paid for finished walls, and a wall that is on but not polished is worth nothing to anybody.
Why the definition of incapacity decides it
A plasterer with a damaged wrist is capable of a great many jobs and cannot hold a trowel, which is the entire trade. Because the skill is concentrated in a very specific physical action, this is one of the clearest cases on the site for a policy that asks whether you can do your own occupation. An any occupation definition looks at a healthy person with a sore wrist and is not wrong, just irrelevant to your income.
The Material Sets The Pace, Not You
This is the thing about plastering that non-plasterers never quite believe, and it is why injury hits this trade harder.
Plaster has a working time. Once it is on the wall, the sequence runs on the material's clock, and if you cannot complete the passes in the window the wall is ruined and has to come off. There is no easing off for a sore wrist, no doing half today, no taking it gently for a fortnight. A plasterer is either able to work at full speed or is not able to work.
Most trades can limp along at reduced capacity while something heals, and that flexibility is worth real money. Plasterers do not have it, which is why the gap between injury and being back earning is usually sharper and more complete than in other trades.
Wrists Are The Trade
Every trade has a part of the body it wears out. For plasterers it is the wrist and forearm, and it is worth understanding why before insuring it.
A trowel is held and worked under constant pressure, at an angle, for hours. The forearm never really relaxes. Over years that produces tendon problems, and in the short term a single awkward twist or a fall onto an outstretched hand can take a plasterer off the tools for months. Unlike a back, a wrist cannot be worked around at all in this trade: there is no version of plastering that does not involve holding a trowel.
That concentration of risk in one small joint is an argument for getting the definition right and for declaring any existing wrist trouble honestly. A wrist that clicks now is a wrist the insurer will find later.
If you stop
Plastering sits between the first fix trades and the decorator, so your slot is the one everybody is waiting on. A builder who loses their plasterer finds another one within days, because the alternative is the whole programme slipping, and the relationship often goes with it.
Common questions
Why is time off worse for a plasterer than other trades?+
Because plaster sets on its own schedule. Once a wall is on, the passes have to be completed within the material's working time, so there is no doing half a ceiling and finishing tomorrow and no working at reduced pace while something heals. Most trades can limp along at eighty per cent for a few weeks; a plasterer is either fit to work at full speed or is not working. That makes the gap between injury and earning sharper.
What injury most often stops a plasterer?+
Wrists and forearms, because a trowel is worked under constant pressure at an angle for hours and the forearm never relaxes. That produces tendon problems over years, and a single fall onto an outstretched hand can take somebody off the tools for months. Shoulders follow close behind from ceiling work. Neither can be worked around, because there is no version of plastering that does not involve holding a trowel.
Do plasterers get sick pay?+
Not if you are self-employed, which most plasterers are. Plastering is also normally priced by the job or the square metre, so you are paid for finished walls: a wall that is on but not polished is worth nothing to anybody, and the work may have to come off. Income protection pays a monthly amount while you cannot work, independent of what you managed to finish.
Will an existing wrist problem stop me getting cover?+
Not necessarily. It may be excluded or the premium loaded, and insurers vary quite a bit on how they treat joint problems in manual trades. The important thing is to declare it: a wrist disclosed at application has been considered and priced, while one that appears for the first time in your medical records at claim becomes the focus of the investigation. A broker is useful precisely because the right insurer for a declared injury is rarely the cheapest on a comparison table.
How long should a plasterer be covered for?+
Long enough to be back at full speed, not just out of a cast, because partial recovery is worth very little in this trade. A wrist that is eighty per cent healed does not let you finish a ceiling in the time the plaster allows. When choosing the benefit period, think about when you could realistically work a full day at proper pace, which is usually later than when the injury is officially better.
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.
- How income protection worksDeferred periods, how claims are paid and what it costs.
- Income protection for decoratorsThe trade after yours, with the same shoulders.
- Income protection for bricklayersWet trades, lifting and the same wear.
- Critical illness coverA lump sum on diagnosis, which works differently.
- Talk to an adviserDeclare any wrist trouble now rather than at claim.