Bin men are often wrongfully snubbed by society when in reality they perform one heck of a valuable job. But it’s also a potentially dangerous job, and we are more than used to taking on and winning claims for personal injury compensation for refuse collectors injured in the line of duty.
Whether you’re employed directly with a local authority or to a privately outsourced company, or even when you are an agency worker contracted to a company or council, you have rights!
The Law
Generally speaking we will normally be talking about work compensation claims, which means that the many health and safety regulations we have in force for employers will be relied upon if you need to claim. Common accident circumstances we have seen are:
- Injuries to hands and arms when handling sharp or dangerous refuse
- Slips and trips when moving bins or using the lorries
- Accidents as a pedestrian moving around refuse wagons
- Manual handling injuries from lifting waste or moving bins
There are loads of regulations that cover the above scenarios to make sure it never happens. So if you are injured in any of the above circumstances, we need to see if your employer is in breach of the rules and regulations and show that this has caused the injury.
For example, we have The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations that put a duty on your employer to provide you with gloves to prevent injuries from handling dangerous waste. The same regulations can also enforce being provided with strong work boots to prevent slips, and The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations puts a duty there to ensure that the wagon, which is classed as work equipment, is not a potential danger to you.
Training is often key when it comes to staying safe, so a lack of training or no training at all that causes an injury can leave your employer liable for a claim. The Manual Handling Operations Regulations are key here, because a lot of the time it comes down to making sure employers are trained correctly in order to prevent an injury.
If you are injured and it is down to a breach of any of the important health and safety legislation that an employer must abide by, you have the right to make a work injury claim for personal injury compensation. Employers must legally be insured, and all we need to do is claim from their insurers to compensate you for any pain, suffering and loss caused.
For help and advice, call our free claims helpline on 0800 634 75 75 and we’ll see if we have a good shot of proving your employer is in breach of important regulations.
