Ten-year liability insurance: compulsory since 2018, and why only the certificate proves it

It comes not from the contract but from the Civil Code. Articles 1792 and 2270 make the architect and the contractor liable for ten years for the defects that compromise the soundness or the stability of the works, including a defect in the ground. It applies whether the quote mentions it or not.

The starting point is neither the signature nor the last day on site: the ten-year period runs from the acceptance of the works (agréation des travaux), the moment when the client accepts the works as properly carried out. Two jobs finished in the same month may therefore have two different starting dates, and it is that date which has to be noted.

Liability is one thing, insuring it is another. A company can be liable for ten years and have nothing with which to pay on the day the defect appears — that is exactly the gap the 2017 Act came to fill, and only in the cases it lists.

The Act of 31 May 2017 came into force on 1 July 2018. According to the FPS Economy, the insurance is only compulsory if four conditions are met at the same time: the involvement of an architect is compulsory, the final planning permission was issued after that date, the work concerns the building or the renovation of a dwelling, and the property is located in Belgium.

Three categories of professional are covered: the architect, the contractor carrying out immovable works in so far as the involvement of an architect is compulsory, and the other providers whose contribution is intangible, such as a design office. The statutory cover, for its part, is confined to the soundness, the stability and the watertightness of the closed structural shell, defined by the Act as the elements that contribute to the stability or the soundness of the works and those that make it wind- and weathertight and watertight.

A second Act, of 9 May 2019, has since 1 July 2019 required professional civil liability insurance of architects, chartered surveyors, safety coordinators and other providers of intellectual services, for every site located in Belgium. It does not cover ten-year liability and does not concern the contractor carrying out the work: two distinct obligations, two distinct certificates.

Before the work starts, the contractor and the other providers hand their ten-year liability insurance certificate to the client and to the architect. On site, each professional must have their own and be able to produce it at the request of the authorised officers; it may come from an individual policy as much as from a collective policy taken out for the site.

Its content is reduced to the essentials, and that is what makes it verifiable: the contractual documents state the name and the enterprise number of the insurance undertaking, together with the number of the contract. Those particulars are what will make it possible to reopen a file years later, when the insured company may have changed its name or disappeared.

The certificate is filed with the site file, not with the quote. If the property changes owner before the end of the period of cover, the notary must consult a register listing ten-year liability insurance policies, mention it in the deed and pass on the certificate where one exists: the cover follows the building, not the first customer.

It does not cover the finishes. Paint, tiling, plastering, interior joinery, fittings: the statutory guarantee stops at the closed structural shell, and even then only where the defect puts the soundness or the stability of the dwelling at risk. A cosmetic defect or poor workmanship without structural consequences is a matter for other remedies, not for this one.

Nor does it cover the solvency of the company or the completion of the job. A deposit lost in a bankruptcy, an abandoned site, a delay: none of that is a construction defect. It is the completion guarantee of a contract subject to the Breyne Act, and the reading of insolvency proceedings described in the guide devoted to insolvency, that answer those questions.

Finally, outside the statutory scope — a building not intended for housing, work where the involvement of an architect is not compulsory, permission issued before 1 July 2018 — no insurance is required. The ten-year liability of the Civil Code nevertheless continues to apply: in those cases it is simply left with no insurance obligation behind it.

A status at the KBO/BCE, the validity of a VAT number, a bankruptcy judgment are published facts: they are read in a register, on a date. Insurance is a private contract between a company and an insurer, and there is no public search that would say "this company is insured today".

The law does organise a flow of information, but between professionals. Insurance undertakings pass to the Order of Architects each year the list of insured architects, with the contract numbers and the dates; the notary consults a register at the time of a transfer of ownership. None of those channels is open to the private individual comparing two quotes.

Two checks therefore remain, and both are manual: asking for the certificate before the work starts, then calling the insurance undertaking named on it to confirm that the contract does cover that job on that date. That is why Domara presents insurance as data declared by the company, dated and not confirmed by a public source, where a KBO/BCE status is taken over from the register as it stands.