New P&I and Defence rules – October 2008

Over recent years the managers have come to the view, shared by a number of members, that the wording of the club's P&I and Defence rules have become excessively long and complicated. Indeed, the wording of some of the rules is somewhat obscure, old fashioned and verbose. This has been caused by the many changes and additions which have occurred over the years.

As indicated in the Circular dated 19 October 2007, and explained in more detail in the Standard Bulleting dated 20 August, we have completed a major overhaul of the rules with the aim of making them shorter and clearer. The intention has not been to alter the extent of cover given, merely the way it is expressed. As a result of the substantial changes which have been made, we have been able to reduce the P&I rules from 32,000 to 18,500 words, and the Defence rules from 13,500 to 750 words. We believe that the new proposed rules are much clearer and more user-friendly than the current ones and will allow members to understand more easily the cover that the club provides and how the club operates.

The new rules will come into effect on 20 February 2009 having been adopted at  the Special General Meeting on 10 October 2008.

Summary of new structure

• wording has been updated, simplified and shortened
• numbering has been streamlined and simplified
• text has been laid out more clearly
• number of headings and sub-headings has been increased
• the order of the P&I rules has been changed, so that the risks covered (rule 3) now appear near the beginning of the rules rather than in the middle
• apart from the scope of cover and the risks covered (rules 2 and 3), the P&I and Defence rules are now the same
• there is no longer the need to repeat identical rules in the P&I and Defence sections of the rule book; rules 4-26 are the same for both classes of business and are only set out once (in the P&I section). The Defence section simply incorporates these rules (where applicable) by reference. The main body of the Defence rules is therefore just the risks covered.
• the "notes" to the existing rules have either been incorporated as rules, or deleted
• the overspill sections have been moved together as rules 21 and 22.
• the old "A" rules have been moved to the Additional Covers section of the rule book

New P&I and Defence rules - October 2008 [355 Kb] This document is in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. The Adobe Acrobat Viewer is available free from Adobe.

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