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The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 exist to put a duty on employers to look after the health and safety of their employees; with the ultimate goal being to avoid injuries at work. One of the most commonly applicable regulations is that of the above, as this places the duty on your employer to make sure that all traffic routes in the workplace are safe to navigate.

Regulation 12.—(1) states that “Every floor in a workplace and the surface of every traffic route in a workplace shall be of a construction such that the floor or surface of the traffic route is suitable for the purpose for which it is used.”  Stairs at work fall within the category of traffic routes – and given that falling down a set of stairs can cause serious injury as you may be falling from a height, the regulations are even more important to abide by.

Slips on Stairs

A slip will normally be caused due to a spillage of some nature, or perhaps a leak, or perhaps from a colleague or hired cleaner mopping the stairs. For your employer to abide by the regulations above, slipping hazards need to be prevented as much as possible – so when it comes to spillages, a system of inspection and maintenance should be used to identify any hazards and rectify them immediately. If your employer fails to have such a system, they may be liable for compensation.
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As with most things that can pose a danger to your health, there are specific regulations for people who have to work at height. These regulations are there for your employer to make sure that any activities you are instructed to undertake that involve working at height do not pose a danger to you.

The applicable regulation is The Work at Height Regulations 2005. To cite some of the important sections of the regulations:

Organisation and Planning

4.—(1) Every employer shall ensure that work at height is—

(a)properly planned;

(b)appropriately supervised; and

(c)carried out in a manner which is so far as is reasonably practicable safe, and that its planning includes the selection of work equipment in accordance with regulation 7.
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Many jobs, particularly those involving a great deal of manual handling, put people at risk of sustaining a twisting back injury. It doesn’t take much to twist whilst carrying a box to injure your back. Whether you pull some ligaments or dislocate a disc in your back, the pain can be agonising and severely debilitating.

If your job involves manual handling, there is an important duty on your employer to prove you with manual handling training and instruction. The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 state the following:
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If you have sustained injury as a result of a pothole in the workplace then you may be entitled to claim compensation. Of course we deal with many claims in relation to potholes but many are in relation to accidents on the street in a public place. The difference is that if you trip or sustain injury due to a pothole in a public place then the council are probably the authority responsible. If you trip or sustain injury due to a pothole in the workplace, such as in the works yard, then any claim would be against the employer if the land is owned by them. If the land is rented then it could be the landlord’s responsibility. But usually it would be the employer’s responsibility to ensure the land is safe and to ensure workers are not injured as a result of any defect (such as a pothole for example).

When we are talking about the workplace, The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 apply. These regulations do contain a specific part in relation to the organisation of traffic routes. The regulations state:
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The building industry can be a dangerous place to work and many workers in this industry are contract workers meaning that they work on numerous sites from week-to-week which they may not necessarily be familiar with. When builders are contracted to work on a particular site they must adhere to the health and safety rules and procedures on that site.

For example, builders may be responsible for making sure any scaffolding erected is safe. There is also a responsibility to keep tools and equipment out of traffic routes where they may cause obstruction for other people to trip on – whether it’s a colleague or a member of the public. When working on site there may be other firms of contractors on site or other workers who work at that particular site on a permanent basis. This is why contractors are required to have an induction and health and safety briefing before commencing work.
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I’m going to discuss the duty your employer has when it comes to working in an environment where a wet floor is common in the workplace.

Say you work in a car wash, or a water plant, or somewhere where the floor is likely to be wet. If this is the case, then can you claim for compensation for slippingon a wet floor at work?

After all, if the floor is wet because of the nature of the business, what can your employer do to prevent an accident occurring? For that answer, we turn to the relevant legislation…
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.For the purposes of this article I am going to discuss the law that is applicable for an accident involving a works vehicle. I’m going to cover what happens if you are injured because the vehicle is broken or defective as oppose to a general road accident – unless the accident was caused due to a defect.

A vehicle provided by your employer is classed as work equipment, and is therefore subject to The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. This hugely important piece of legislation puts an important duty on your employer to make sure that work equipment that is provided to you is, in essence, safe to use.

I will quote some of the important parts of the regulations:

5.1 – “Every employer shall ensure that work equipment is maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.”

5.2 – “Every employer shall ensure that where any machinery has a maintenance log, the log is kept up to date.”
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I’m going to write in parts to this article – one from the perspective of a trainee or new employee having an accident, and the other from the perspective of someone injured by a trainee or new employer at work!

You Start Work

So you start your new job and you are being trained up in how to be as efficient as possible for the company. There are lots of things you need to learn and health and safety is an issue that needs to be in the forefront of both your mind and your employers. When you are in a new environment, you may lack the skills necessary to understand certain risks. For ease of example, we’ll use a building site:
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If you have an accident at work and it wasn’t your fault, you may have a claim for compensation against your employer. All employers have a legal duty to have a policy of employer’s liability insurance that covers them for claims being made against them. The insurance is there to be claimed from.

But what happens if you are at work and you are injured by one of your colleagues? What happens if you are lifting a heavy item and your colleague drops it because they weren’t paying enough attention? Or what happens if your colleague accidentally drives in to you with a forklift truck? Or what about if they switch a machine on whilst you are cleaning it?

Who is to blame?

Well the colleague is generally at fault if you look at it from a literal perspective if they were the negligent one, but in the eyes of the law you may be able to claim against your employer for compensation. It’s called vicarious liability, and it generally means, in a workplace scenario, that the negligence of a colleague falls on to your employer.
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If you have been injured and you were not wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, can you still make a claim for compensation? In simple terms the answer is yes, you still may be able to make a claim. You should of course be wearing a helmet if you are on a bicycle or motorbike. The same concept also applies to work accidents in terms of wearing a hard hat where neccessary. There is a possibility that the Defendant (the other driver, an employer etc) may allege something called contributory negligence. This can reduce the compensation that you are entitled to; however this does not normally wipe out your compensation in its entirety.

It may be works practice or rules to wear a hard hat at all times whilst on site. Say you forgot to wear your hard hat and you sustained a head injury when an object fell. In this case it is likely that an element of contributory negligence would be found by a court. You can still claim and recover compensation, as there may still be negligence in that an object fell, putting employees at risk of sustaining injury. If contributory negligence is agreed or found by a court, your compensation would be reduced.
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