Rules and regulations that employers have to abide by when it comes to manual handling activities in the course of your employment are strict and numerous. There’s a very good and rather obvious reasons for this; manual handling injuries tend to affect the back. Your back is of course one of the most important parts of the body, so injuring it can be considerably debilitating.
Whilst manual handling comes in to almost everybody’s role in some way, it applies to others far more in certain occupations. It applies minimally for me as I’m an office worker, lifting only boxes of paper or files on the odd occasion.
But a plumber, or a mechanic, or anyone on a constructions site or in a warehouse, are going to be doing a lot of lifting as part of their role. As such, proper manual handling training and risk assessments should be done by your employer to comply with the law!
It is your employer’s direct responsibility to ensure that any and all manual handling activities conducted in the course of your employment are thoroughly risk assessed, and ensure that you are trained to deal with the task.
However, this does not just mean they have to risk assess and train you with regards to anything in the workplace; this does extend to anywhere that you have to work in.
If you are a delivery driver and you have to haul large items off the back of the lorry at the delivery destination, the rules and regulations apply. Normally you should have a lift to get the load off the delivery lorry and a pallet truck or similar device if it’s too heavy for a single person to manoeuvre. The point I’m making is that your workplace is anywhere where you work.
If you are a photocopier engineer, you may need to move a large office photocopying machine away from the wall to inspect it for repairs. This may be in some random office that isn’t technically where you normally work – but the rules apply and this it is classed as your workplace and therefore the task is your employer’s responsibility.
So if you injure yourself moving the photocopier because it’s too heavy and you have been instructed to move it, you could make a claim.
Basically, if it’s in the course of your employment and you are authorised to do it, the task should be risk assessed to make sure that the load is safe to manoeuvre, and you should be properly trained to be able to move it.
If it isn’t risk assessed or you aren’t properly trained, and you injure yourself as a result, you can make a claim for personal injury compensation from your employers insurance.
Given the nature of back injuries, treatment is commonly needed to help you get back on the road to recovery as quickly as possible. We can normally assist with private medical care right from the start of the claim and we can charge it to your employers insurance.
You can claim amounts for the injuries sustained as a result of the accident, as well as any lost earnings or medical and travel expenses incurred as a result of the injury and accident. The idea of making a claim is to put you back in the position you were in financially as if the injury had never have occurred.
At The Injury Lawyers, we cover all bases to make sure you get the maximum payout possible.
Give us a call on 0800 634 75 75 today for a free, no obligation claims assessment.
