The Best Personal Injury Lawyers in the UK
How do you know who the best injury lawyers in the UK really are? Well luckily we can answer this question for you – because we know exactly what it is you should be able to expect from a quality injury lawyer to make sure you get the best service and the maximum amount of compensation possible.
Naturally, as we are The Injury Lawyers, a firm of specialist personal injury only lawyers with years of compensation claiming experience behind us, we do all we can to make sure that what we do is better than the rest. And to be honest, we can prove that it is (in our opinion).
It’s easy to start by simply understanding what it is a person needs when they are making a CLAIM for compensation.
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Health and Safety – Working With Supermarket Cages
Supermarket cages (also known as roll containers, roll cages, roll pallets etc) can be a danger to you, whether you work in a supermarket or simply shop in one. Unfortunately many accidents involving supermarket cages have happened in the past and continue to happen to date.
The Research Report 009 titled “Safety of roll containers” describes a roll container as follows:
“Roll containers are half pallet-sized platforms, with four running castors and with a wire cage used to contain goods during transport. They may be used to transport goods in a lorry between a warehouse and a retail store for instance or within a supermarket to transport goods from the store room to the sales floor.”
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Most people would agree that the manufacturing industry is not what it once was – certainly not in the Steel City where I grew up. However, that is not to say that there is no heavy industry anymore and many people still go to work in factories every day. Most modern factories will of course involve certain types of machinery which the law calls “work equipment”.
Work equipment is any machinery, appliance, apparatus or tool that you use at work for your role. This may be something that your employer has provided or something that you have brought to work yourself. If you are using it as part of your employment then it is classified as work equipment. Work equipment is not the same as personal protective equipment (i.e. gloves, boots and safety helmets) and the two are dealt with by separate regulations.
There are specific rules and regulations that your employer must follow to make sure that you are safe when using various types of work equipment. These regulations are the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 and these set out all the responsibilities that an employer has toward his employees.
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Package Tour Regulation – Accident Abroad Compensation Claims
Everyone looks forward to their summer holidays – sun, relaxation and usually a healthy dose of alcohol! There aren’t many things that sound better to me personally.
However, while holidays abroad are all well and good, if something goes wrong and you are a long way from home, what can you do about it?
If you have booked a package holiday in the UK and have suffered an injury in your accommodation or in a place where the company that you booked with were looking after you then you may have a right to compensation through the Package Tour Regulations 1992.
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A Rise in Deaths of 18-25 Year Old Drivers
Last month the Government has been advised by the Transport Select Committed that there has been a rise in fatal deaths from road traffic accidents for people aged 18-25 years old. This has been the first increase of death in over 10 years and has therefore put the issue in the media.
Fatal road traffic accidents are the main killer amongst the 16-24 year old bracket. The rise of deaths has been shocking – an increase of 12% in pedestrians and a rise of 6% of cyclists and motorcyclists.
The rise in figures has been blamed on the current Government for scrapping the national targets and comments have gone so far as to say that the Government is not dealing with road safety as a top priority. As a result of these comments the Government has announced that they will publish their road safety strategy later this year.
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Contributory Negligence – Personal Injury Claims
The two words in the title of this blog are often used by insurance companies in personal injury claims; they can be seen as accusatory and are often misunderstood, and many people bringing a claim see them as two very big words.
Contributory Negligence is often used by insurers or Defendants (any person who a claim is brought against) in order to try and reduce the damages that they will have to pay to the innocent victim.
The way it works is that the Defendant will admit that they were at fault for the accident BUT allege that the Claimant (the injured person bringing the claim) was at least partly responsible for their injuries. To clear a common misunderstanding a Defendant cannot use this to say that the accident was the Claimants fault – there is no such thing as 100% Contributory Negligence. In fact the law was altered as long ago as 1945 to stop this happening.
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Personal Protective Equipment – Protect Yourself at Work!
We all know how unpredictable life can be and that – especially with accidents – it is very difficult to know what is going to happen next. This doesn’t mean that we can’t try and prepare though and we should all take care to minimise the potential effects of any accident; this is especially true in the workplace.
If your job involves any type of risk to your health then your employer should issue you with items that will minimise the risks where possible – these items are known as Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE. Types of PPE include: Respirators, Protective Gloves, Protective Footwear, Goggles, Hi-visibility clothing and any other item designed to be worn or used for your health, safety and protection.
In cases where the risks to your health and safety cannot be adequately controlled through other measures then PPE becomes a legal requirement under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992. These regulations say that employers are responsible for providing, replacing and paying for personal protective equipment as well as training you in how to use it safely and effectively.
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The Personal Injury Claims Process
In this blog I will attempt to explain the claims process for general personal injury claims. By general personal injury claims I mean tripping/slipping accidents (whether in a public place or in the supermarket for example), work accidents, injuries involving animals etc.
These are all accidents that come under the scope of the Pre-Action Protocol for Personal Injury Claims. Road traffic accidents do not initially come under this protocol and are processed in a different way and are subject to different time limits. Road traffic accidents come under the scope of the Road Traffic Accident Protocol.
However a case can “fall out” of the road traffic accident protocol (such as if the insurers fail to respond to the claim in time). If a road traffic accident claim falls out of the Road Traffic Accident Protocol then that claim continues under the Pre-Action Protocol for Personal Injury Claims by default.
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Manual Handling Training – Who Carries the Responsibility?
Manual Handling and the techniques involved in moving loads from one place to another has become a mainstay in almost all companies’ health and safety folders. These are techniques designed to reduce the risk of employees injuring themselves and make everybody’s lives easier; but who has the responsibility when it comes to employees’ education in these techniques?
The answer can be found in the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992. These say that under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999 it is an employers’ responsibility to provide employees with the proper information and training on health and safety matters – this can look like quite a complicated statement as it contains a lot of different pieces of legislation but the message is the same – it is your employers responsibility to make sure that you know what you are doing at work when it comes to manual handling, and the best way to do it.
However, putting this into practice requires a two-way flow of information between you and your employer and means that both of you have roles to play in making sure that injuries are not suffered in the workplace.
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Back in the days before Health and Safety was invented a fall in the workplace due to a trailing cable or wet floor was probably met with a response of “pick your feet up” or “watch where you’re going” or sometimes even laughter.
Even now some employers try and adopt the culture that falling over isn’t so serious (some comedians even make a whole career out of it) but for employees on the receiving end of these accidents it is no laughing matter.
Slips and trips in the workplace can result in anything from bruises to serious injuries. The fact of the matter is that your employer has a responsibility to keep you safe at work and if they have failed to ensure that there are proper procedures to look after your safety then they are at fault.
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