As work accident specialists I can tell you that there are a LOT of workplace rules and regulations when it comes to health and safety legislation. They cover all areas like general safety, equipment, manual handling, working at height, personal protective equipment, chemicals, and all sorts.
The reason for this is to ensure that employees are safe at work and to put specific duties on employers to take steps and action to avoid injuries. But although there are several sets of regulations covering several different things, they all usually have one particular regulation in common: training!
Training is of course very important when it comes to health and safety legislation. It’s no good having policies and procedures in place for things like manual handling or using work equipment if people don’t know what the policies are, and how to follow them safely.
Most of the regulations do have a specific section in relation to training and supervision, and it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that adequate training takes place when necessary. It is also their duty to ensure that further and refresher training takes place where it is needed, and to ensure that training is properly understood and recorded.
A simple bit of shadowing a colleague isn’t always enough. Employees need to know the specific dangers of certain working ways as well.
So if you have been injured at work due to a training problem you may have a successful claim for work accident compensation.
Examples where you might have a good claim can be:
- No training provided at all
- Inadequate training
- Failure to enforce training correctly (or at all)
- Future and refresher / ongoing training where necessary not being provided
- No training when things change – like using new work equipment, for example
The excuse that ‘its obvious’ or that ‘you should have known’ isn’t acceptable when training could have prevented a genuine accident. There are of course rather obvious things that do not need training but the best thing to do is give our team at The Injury Lawyers a call and we can advise you (normally in minutes) whether you have a claim or not.
We’re real lawyers – which means when you call our advice line on 0800 634 7575 you’re speaking to an actual law firm who can not only tell you if you have a case but can also actually represent you for the claim as well.
