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Working at height poses a great risk to safety, accounting for a quarter of all workplace deaths. Falling from a height is the one most common causes of an accident within the workplace causing minor/major injuries and fatalities. Of course most of the time the fall isn’t from a great height, with 70 per cent of all accidents being caused from falling from below head height.

Injuries likely to be caused by falling from a height are as follows:

• Twist or swelling to the knees
• Sprained or broken limbs
• Back pain or slipped discs
• Soft tissues damage to the body area

The Working at Height Regulations 2005 were introduced to try and prevent accidents caused by a fall from height, and the regulations are to apply to anywhere where there is a risk of falling. The 2005 regulations set out that a height is to be defined as ‘any place, including a place at or below ground level‘, which liable to cause a personal injury.
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Slips and trips at work are one of the most common causes of accidents at work, resulting in 40% of all major injuries in the workplace. 10,000 employees alone were injured in the UK last year from slips and trips at work. Injuries can range from broken bones and fractures to minor cuts and bruises.

The common causes of slips and trips at work:

• Cleaning
• Flooring
• Environment
• Obstacles
• Colleagues
• Footwear

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, is in place to ensure the health and safety of all employees within the workplace.

Under Regulation 2 of the act, an employer has the duty to ‘as is reasonably practicable‘ ensure ‘the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees‘. An employer must ‘provide instruction, and training‘ to all employees that will be working with the workplace, and therefore be fully competent in using it.
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We specialise and deal only with claims for personal injury compensation. We have particular expertise, and many years of experience, in representing victims of work accidents. Work accidents are fairly common because there are a lot of rules and regulations that an employer can breach. We have regulations covering most scenarios. Here are some examples:

The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992

These cover traffic routes and therefore slips and trips, general health and safety of the workplace, falls or falling objects, doors and gates, windows and skylights, and all sorts of things. The common ones are slips and trips. So if you have an accident in relation to any of the above, you may be able to make claim for personal injury compensation.
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Employers have a duty to protect their employees in the workplace. The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, or PUWER as they are informally known, outline what exactly an employer needs to do to meet this duty.

For example, Regulation 5 sets out ‘Every employer shall ensure that work equipment is maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair‘ and Regulation 4.3 sets out ‘Every employer shall ensure that work equipment is used only for operations for which, and under conditions for which, it is suitable‘.

To summarise, an employer must ensure that all work equipment is in good working order and is completely suitable for the relevant task in hand. Examples of work equipment are hammers, knives, ladders, and may other tools – in fact, most equipment or machinery used within the working day. The 1998 regulations ensure that employees are covered when stopping and starting equipment, maintaining, cleaning and repairing all work equipment.
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Manual Handling is one of the most common causes of injury in the workplace. Manual Handling generally includes; lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling or carrying, and most employees carry out some sort of manual handling within their working day.

Common types of injury caused by manual handling are:

• Back pain
• Sprains and strains to lower back and shoulders
• Damages to muscles and tendons

The Manual Handling Operations Regulations were introduced in 1992 in order to keep employees safe in the workplace and to reduce the number of employees injured at work.

The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 set out that employer should ‘so far as is reasonably practicable, avoid the need for his employees to undertake any manual handling operations at work which involve a risk of injury‘ and ‘shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of all such operations which cannot be avoided‘ plus ‘shall take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of injury during those operations to the lowest level reasonably practicable‘.
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Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE as its commonly known, is essential in many occupations and is there to act as protection against health and safety hazards in the workplace. PPE is defined in the The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 as ‘all equipment which is intended to be worn or held by a person at work and which protects him against one or more risks to his health or safety‘.

PPE comes in many forms such as:

• Helmets and hard hats
• Goggles
• Safety footwear
• Safety harnesses
• Life jackets

It is an employer’s duty to provide PPE and to make sure it is suitable to the job which is being carried out.
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We deal with all types of accidents at work claims which can obviously be wide ranging from tripping and slipping accidents from accidents involving machinery or equipment etc. If you have sustained injury in an accident at work then you may be entitled to claim compensation.

The first point to note is that your option to make a claim is not open indefinitely. You normally have 3 years from the date of the accident to ether settle the claim or to issue court proceedings on your claim. If court proceedings are not issued within the 3 year period then you may lose your right to claim compensation. Obviously the claim may settle before the 3 year period is up. If the claim is not settled 3 years from the date of the accident then court proceedings would need to be issued – otherwise the claim becomes statute barred. This basically means that you may lose your right to claim!
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Cherry pickers can be fairly dangerous if something goes wrong. Aside from the obvious working at height, there are particular hazards if your employer fails to properly equip and prepare you for using the cherry picker. So let’s look at a few examples.

One of the most common types of accidents is people crashing them. Although they can be fairly slow, it only takes one clip of something to rock the platform and you could easily fall over or knock yourself on something. So starting with this, could you make a claim for a cherry picker crash?

If the controls were in the hands of a colleague, you should have a strong case. We can allege that your employer is vicariously liable in the event a colleague’s negligence causes you injury. That’s the general rule of vicarious liability. If you are at the helm, then it could come down to training. Have you ever had training in using the picker? Did you crash it because you were unsure of the controls? In this kind of situation, the failure to train could be a path to making a compensation claim. Safety equipment, like a helmet, could be used to prevent a head injury from a fall. So we could take that in to account as well.
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Store rooms can be fairly dangerous places if employers fail to follow basic health and safety regulations. The most common types of store room accidents are usually caused by the room being too full or dangerously organised (or not organised at all) which normally causes trips, slips from spillages, and accidents involving working at height with ladders or steps.

Employers have an important general duty to make sure that all areas of the workplace are safe to navigate; so when it comes to a stock room being organised and not overfilled, we can apply The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. These state that all traffic routes shall be safe to navigate. So if you fall because you can’t properly get round a stockroom as it’s too full, you may have a claim for compensation.

If you trip because stock is on the floor when it shouldn’t be, you may also have a claim. Commonly this comes down to one of two things – either poor organisation on your employers part meaning you could apply the above regulations again, or something called vicarious liability.
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We deal with all types of accidents at work which can obviously be wide ranging from tripping and slipping accidents from accidents involving machinery or equipment etc. If you have sustained injury in an accident at work then you may be entitled to claim compensation.

The first point to note is that your option to make a claim is not open indefinitely. You normally have 3 years from the date of the accident to either settle the claim or to issue court proceedings on your claim. If court proceedings are not issued within the 3 year period then you may lose your right to claim compensation. Obviously the claim may settle before the 3 year period is up. If the claim is not settled 3 years from the date of the accident then court proceedings would need to be issued – otherwise the claim becomes statute barred. This basically means that you may lose your right to claim!
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