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Most industry workers will be aware of the term PPE, or Personal Protective Equipment. In many jobs PPE is required in order to keep workers safe and free from injury or harm. Without adequate PPE injuries are more likely to occur and this ultimately can cost a company a lot of money in dealing with personal injury claims. There is a duty on employers to keep employees reasonably safe and free from harm. One method of protecting employees from harm is providing them with adequate PPE.

PPE can be in many different forms from hard hats, steel toe cap boots, overalls, high-visibility vests, goggles, gloves, ear muffs etc. Each item of PPE is designed to protect employees from hazards in the workplace. Workers who use potentially dangerous chemicals as part of their job (such as employees of pharmaceutical companies) should be provided with adequate eye protection. Equally people who work in the steel industry should be provided with adequate hearing protection and people who work on building sites should be provided with hard hats, high visibility vests and potentially other protection such as hearing protection.
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Vicarious liability for a work accident compensation claim essentially means that you have been injured due to the negligence of a colleague. If you are injured due to the negligence of a colleague, in UK law, your employer is vicariously can be found liable which means they have the duty (normally through their insurers) to compensate you. So for example : if your co-worker, let’s call him “Jim”, runs in to you whilst driving a forklift truck because he wasn’t looking where he was going, fear not; you don’t have to sue “Jim” personally! In this situation, the claim can be brought against your employer.

Employers Liability Insurance covers vicarious liability claims.

Claims that fall within the realm of vicarious liability usually have pretty high success rates. Here are a few examples of cases where your employer can be vicariously liable (aside from the forklift one above):
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Tripping up is something that can happen almost anywhere, even if sometimes it may be a trip over our own feet rather than over a dangerously placed object. Most claims for tripping up arise out of trips out and about in a public place. Most trips occur outside in the high street and are caused by raised paving slabs, uncovered manholes, potholes etc…

If you trip and sustain injury in a public place then a claim would be made against the owner of the land in question. In terms of public places, the owner of the land would ordinarily be the local council. With private property such as in a shop or on a shop forecourt, the shop itself would be liable. This is because the owners of the land in question are under a duty to keep the land reasonably safe.

If you trip and sustain injury at work then you may be entitled to bring a claim against your employer. This may differ in circumstances where you are a contractor working on another company’s premises for example.  In such a scenario a claim would most likely be brought against the company who owned the premises in which you were working. As with all tripping claims the court will look at various facts such as whether there was any warning of the danger, what precautions were taken, how long was the hazard left unattended etc…
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Most people would agree that the industrial work place can be a fairly dangerous place to be and that everything possible should be done to keep people who work in this type of environment as safe as possible. One way in which this is done is through the use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), this is any equipment (including clothing) that should be worn or used by a person at work to protect them against risks to his health and safety.

If you work in an environment where there are risks to your health and safety then your employer will usually need to provide you with some form of PPE, in fact there are regulations in place that make it a legal requirement for them to provide this type of protection to their employees. These regulations are called The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992. While many people may see Regulations as another layer of red-tape to add to what should be good old-fashioned common sense it should be a comfort to know that as an employee you have a legal right to be provided with PPE while at work.
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With personal injury claims you can recover compensation for General Damages for the pain and suffering and you can also recover Special Damages for any losses incurred as a result of the accident.

An example of Special Damage is loss of earnings.

Say for example you sustain injury, whether it be at work or in a road traffic accident, and as a result of your injuries you may have to take time off work and subsequently you may have lost earnings. As part of a Special Damages claim you can try and recover the lost earnings. As with most aspects of Special Damages you should obtain wage slips as you’ll have to prove those earnings lost due to your injury.
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With the introduction of the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 it is fair to say that the majority of employers have taken action and introduced manual handling training to their employees. However, it seems that there are still certain sectors of employment where statistics show more could be done by the employer to prevent injury when moving obstacles within the employment.

In social care, moving patients, equipment and supplies or waste is a significant part of a daily routine. Subsequently around 2,000 injuries are reported each year in social care work which has occurred from manual handling. Over 50% of the injuries reported involving lifting and manoeuvring patients. The statistics of how many injuries occur in social care may be alarming to some especially with the introduction of the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992.

Under the Regulation 4 Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 your employer owes you a duty to reduce the risk of injury to employees when a task involves manual handling. By reducing the risk it can involve avoiding the handling all together where reasonably practice, putting in measures in place to avoid injury to individuals and other employees and to assess the risks when manual handling cannot be avoided.
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We often get asked how long a particular claim will take. In response, I would ask how long is a piece of string? Jokes aside, the truth is that it is impossible to say with any certainty how long your claim could take. At the outset of the claim it is impossible to predict.

All lawyers rely to a certain extent on other businesses/people whether that be insurers, other solicitors, clients, the courts etc. We endeavour to do our part as soon as possible but if for example, an insurer is failing to respond to us, we can take action via the courts to progress matters but we have to comply with the relevant protocols (which for example means that we have to give the insurers a certain amount of time in which to respond to the claim). However protocols are a good thing and are designed primarily to speed up the claims process.

To initiate an accident at work claim we basically draft a letter to the Defendant known as a “Letter of Claim”. This letter will set out the nature and circumstances of the Claimant’s claim, reasons why the Defendant is at fault and the relevant disclosure documentation that should be provided if liability is not admitted. The Defendant or the Defendant’s insurers have a period of 21 days in which to acknowledge receipt of the Letter of Claim.
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Here at The Injury Lawyers we deal with all types of personal injury claims. We deal solely with claims for injury. We have a team of specialist personal injury lawyers who strive to bring your claim to a swift and successful conclusion. We deal with all types of work accidents including tripping and slipping accidents, accidents involving scaffolding, work equipment accidents, industrial diseases etc. If you have sustained injury (or developed an industrial disease) as a result of an accident at work then you may be entitled to make a claim for compensation.

Many people are reluctant to bring a claim against their employer, particularly in the current economic climate. While this is certainly understandable, employers are required to have employer’s liability insurance which is in place for the sole purpose of paying out compensation to injured victims, such as yourself. It is your right to make a claim but equally it is your right to make the decision on whether to make a claim or not. It is your right to make a claim and your right to decide whether or not to exercise that right to claim. In some situations you may no longer work for that company or employer and therefore you may want to bring a claim. However you should note that the right to claim is not open indefinitely.

For general accidents at work you normally have 3 years (from the date of the accident itself) to either settle your claim or issue Court Proceedings for English / Welsh jurisdiction. If Court Proceedings are not issued within this 3 year limitation period then you may lose your right to claim compensation. Therefore it is always prudent to bring a claim as soon as possible if you have sustained injury and if you want to claim.
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Many people think that accidents at work only happen on construction sites because of the heavy machinery and dangerous nature of that work. However, accidents also occur in the office environment, something which when compared to a building site seems relatively safe.

One of the major hazards in an office can be slips and trips. If you work in an office and look around it there are potentially a lot of hazards. For example, wires that have not be directed properly, over stacked files which could potentially fall, drawers left open, bags and briefcases not stored properly are all common hazards that may seem unimportant but can potentially cause serious accidents.

So how do you bring a claim for work office accident? Like any other personal injury claim you would have to establish that your employers have been negligent. For example: if they have not ensured that wires are correctly stored and you consequently trip on them they can be considered to have not provided a safe place of work.
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As a man who used to spend his time climbing rocks faces as a hobby, both indoor and outdoor, and having previously worked at height for a refurbishing job a few years back, I’m no stranger to the danger involved and the measures people need to take place to ensure you don’t end up falling from a height.

It only takes one slip, trip, or stumble when up high somewhere to end up careering down a height and facing the potential of a serious injury. It’s an obvious statement that falling from a height can end up in serious damage and even fatalities. So when it comes to working at height as part of the role, the responsibility, as always, falls largely on your employer.

Your employer must take all reasonable steps to ensure that you are safe when working at height. If you are working with ladders, you should be properly trained and provided with the right type of ladders for the job you are doing. If the job requires someone to be at the base of the ladders to stabilise them, then this should always be the case. You should be fully fit to use the ladders, and the ladders should be in a condition to allow the job to be done safely. So if the ladders were to collapse due to disrepair, or fall because they were the wrong type of ladders for the job, or if they were not suitably stabilised, you may have a claim against your employer.
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