Slips and trips at work, especially in storerooms, are fairly common. A lot of places lack the procedures that ensure tidiness in the workplace to ensure that clutter does not end up causing a slipping or tripping hazard to any employees.
The duty to ensure that the workplace is free from such hazards is your employers. If they fail to have good systems in place for keeping the storerooms tidy, or fail to enforce such a policy, you may be able to make a claim for personal injury compensation from your employers insurance.
Common examples of these kinds of claims that can be successful:
- Stock is placed anywhere in the storeroom with many items not having a designated area, causing items to be on the floor and in walkways, posing a tripping hazard.
- Managers failing to enforce a clean storeroom policy, allowing it to become dangerous.
- Colleagues failing to follow a policy and causing an injury to you (referred to as vicarious liability, where the negligence of a colleague falls on your employer).
- Paper, posters, or promotional leaflets left to fall out of boxes or left on the ground in general, posing a slipping hazard.
- Stock is mishandled causing liquid containers to break and floors to become wet – also posing a slipping hazard.
The law, which is generally what you need to be on your side to win a claim, is clear in these kinds of scenarios.
The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 has a specific regulation (12) that is designated to address the issue of the condition of floors and traffic routes. The regulations state that:
(3) So far as is reasonably practicable, every floor in a workplace and the surface of every traffic route in a workplace shall be kept free from obstructions and from any article or substance which may cause a person to slip, trip or fall.
This places the duty directly on your employer to make sure systems and procedures are in place to prevent floors becoming dangerous, and they must have some way of properly upholding the policy as well. Failing to do this is a breach of this regulation, and we can use that as our primary argument to say to your employer “you are liable for our client’s accident!”
When we can prove a breach of the regulations that are there to ensure a reasonable duty of care is in place for your health and safety in the workplace, we can usually make a successful claim for personal injury compensation from your employers insurance. They should have (as is a requirement by law) employers liability insurance which is there to cover you for claims from your employer.
So if you have fallen foul of poor practise when it comes to the safety of storerooms at your place of work, call us now on 0800 634 75 75 and let’s see if we can help you out.
