When it comes to settling your claim for personal injury compensation, there are always two pieces of vital advice that we give to people:

1: Dealing with the insurers directly is dangerous and you risk under settling your claim.
2: The first offer that the insurers make will almost certainly be less than what you are owed.

Insurers are, ultimately, private profit making organisations whose duty is to their shareholders. To keep their shareholders happy, they must keep their profit margins high to allow their shareholders to get a good return on their investment. To maintain high profit margins, they have to keep costs down. And the way they keep costs down is by keeping payout amounts to a minimum.
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With many of us thinking of becoming more eco-friendly, travelling on the bus has risen in popularity as the car is left at home and we embark on a journey where someone else is doing the driving! But unfortunately, this does not remove you from the possibility of being involved in an accident with several bus accidents occurring on the roads every day.

If you are a passenger on a bus there are several reasons why you may have sustained an injury. Some examples of bus accidents are as follows:

Collisions – The bus is involved in a collision with another vehicle or object. This circumstance is of course quite straight forward however we would need to ascertain whether it was the bus as fault or the other vehicle. For example; if a car has pulled out in front of a bus it is most likely going to be the car’s fault- however vice versa if the bus has pulled out into a car- the bus driver is most likely to be held liable.
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Contact dermatitis is something that is often suffered by professionals, such as hairdressers, as with the nature of their job, they are required to use their hands all day every day, and are required to come into contact with strong substances such as hair dye and bleach. Therefore, although this blog may seem steered predominantly towards hairdressers, anyone that is required to have their hands in contact with a substance for a pro-longed amount of time may end up suffering with the injury.

So what is contact dermatitis?

Contact dermatitis is a type of eczema that can cause red, itchy and scaly skin, and sometimes burning and stinging. It can lead to your skin becoming blistered, dry and cracked. Of course not a particularly pleasant thing to be suffering from.
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The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 explained: Personal Protective Equipment, or “PPE” to those in the know, includes all equipment which a person has to ensure their safety at work. This includes any safety boots, protective eyewear, kneepads, safety masks, gloves, harnesses, life jackets and many, many more things.

How do I know if the equipment is safe?

The equipment must meet a basic health and safety requirement by the manufacturer or their representative which is applicable to that type of PPE. For example, safety harnesses will need to meet a set standard. Once approval is given, a “CE” mark must be presented on the product and maintained effectively.
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Working in an office may seem like one of the safer choices of career environments; but they are not immune from accidents and consequently injuries. Understandably, it is rare to sustain an injury as serious as one you may sustain on a building site – however, injuries can still occur. So here’s a couple of examples of regulations that apply more directly to office compensation claims.

Slips and Trips

Your employer is under a duty to ensure the working environment is a safe one and therefore trailing wires, open cupboard doors, spillages and piles of paperwork and folders should be managed to ensure they do not cause a tripping or slipping hazard and ensure nobody is injured. That is why on your first day of work you probably have to indulge a lot of paperwork explaining health and safety and what not to do.
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Manual handling involves moving objects or items from one place to another by lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying or lowering. It is not only, as many people think, the fact that something is heavy which necessarily causes injury, but it could arise from the way in which something was moved or handled. This could even occur if an object was relatively light by repeating the movement many times.

What must employers do?

Where it is reasonably practicable, employers should remove the need for their employees to handle objects manually where there is a risk of being injured. This could be achieved by finding mechanical solutions to reduce the need for manual handling by employees.
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Commonly a manhole cover accident may occur due to the manhole being uncovered, or by the cover being unsecured or damaged.

It may not always be clear who the manhole cover is owned by.  Manhole covers can be owned by local councils, water boards, electricity companies, gas boards and many other type of similar company. Each one of these companies and boards have a duty to protect you from harm, as far as is ‘reasonably practical‘ under S41 of The Highways Act 1980 and under the general scope of the Occupiers Liability Act.

There may be a system of inspection in place by the council or company that owns it to ensure that the manhole cover is maintained and is safe. Inspections may check for any defects and ensure that regular maintenance is carried out. If there are any complaints made about the manhole covers, there is a duty to investigate and to ensure that the defect is rectified.
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The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1992 (or “PUWER” for short) was brought in to ensure that all equipment used in most work environments meets a minimum standard of safety. It also requires that the equipment is safely maintained by employers.

What falls within PUWER?

PUWER has a very wide remit and includes employers which provide equipment for their employees to carry out their work. It includes local councils, businesses and charities. The equipment which falls within the remit is similarly wide in scope. It includes any machinery, appliance, apparatus, or a combination of components which form a common end but work as one. This is an extremely wide list of employers and equipment but it is necessary keep the employers providing equipment in its remit.
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The Pre-Action Protocol for Employers’ Liability (EL) and Public Liability (PL) claims was brought into force on 31^st July 2013 and applies to most employer and public liability cases which are valued between £1,000 and £25,000.

What the Protocol aims to Achieve

The Protocol goes into detail about what the court would expect the parties to do before the need to commence court proceedings. The Protocol ensures that the damages for easily resolvable claims are paid within a reasonable time. This avoids a lengthy waiting time to be compensated.
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April saw the biggest shakeup in the personal injury claiming world when the government in their absolute and infinite wisdom decided to attack access to justice by making certain things unrecoverable from the other side. The result is that most other law firms are now charging clients a huge percentage of their compensation if the claim succeeds.

In addition to this, most slip and trip accident claims that occur on or after 31^st July 2013 will be pursued under a new protocol which is similar to the one used for road accident claims. This new protocol is designed for speed and efficiency for claiming, but the government have fixed the fees at such a low rate that it again hampers the quality of legal services that other law firms can offer unless charges are made to clients.

So we are now in a situation where the innocent victims who have been injured through no fault of their own, but through the negligence of someone else, are having to pay to make a claim! The whole idea behind claiming is to put the victim back in a pre-accident position; losing money doesn’t do that.
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