The Workplace Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations of 1992 gives help to anyone who has fallen over in the workplace. Regulation 12 of the regulations requires that floors and any ‘traffic routes’ need to be free from holes, slopes, slippery surfaces or things that are going to cause someone to slip, trip or fall. The regulations use the word ‘shall’ and not ‘may’ or ‘ought to’ and therefore employers are under a very strict duty to comply with these regulations. If you fall at work these regulations can help you recover compensation for your injury or loss of earnings.
Even without the regulations, employers can be held simply to be negligent and therefore liable to you in damages.
The duty increases under the regulations when someone slips in an area which is likely to get wet. Employers are obliged to use slip-resistant coatings and to carry out regular risk assessments to ensure that areas are not a slipping or tripping hazard.
Regulation 17 of the Workplace Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations of 1992 provides that an employer has to organise the workplace so that pedestrians and vehicles can move in the same area without injury either to the driver or to the pedestrians. Employers need to make sure that there is sufficient space for vehicles to pass and that they can pass each other without there being injury or damage. If you are hit by a vehicle at work then these regulations can help you to recover compensation.
Employers should also carry out risk assessments to ensure that vehicles going through the factory or place of work are unlikely to cause injury.
The Provision and Use of Work and Equipment Regulations (PUWER) of 1998 place an obligation on employers to make sure that tools that you are given to work with are safe. Regular risk assessments should be carried out and if a piece of equipment breaks, causing injury to you, the law treats such injuries (since a recent Court decision) almost as strict liability. This means that you will almost always get compensation for your injuries.
Employers are also obliged to maintain the equipment in a safe, efficient and working order.
The Workplace Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations of 1992 put an obligation on employers to make sure that employees cannot be injured by falling objects or by themselves falling from a height. Employers are under an obligation to carry out regular risk assessments to ensure that items that are likely to fall or areas from which someone might fall are not allowed to remain in the workplace. If falling objects are likely, your boss should let you have a helmet to prevent injury. If you are told to wear a hat, make sure that you wear it!
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations of 1999 put an obligation on an employer to ensure that machines are guarded to prevent persons from catching their hands or clothing or any other item in a machine in a manner which is likely to cause an injury. If a guard is not fitted to a machine or if it is not maintained and an injury is caused, an employee can claim compensation.
Employers are obliged to provide Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992. The PPE should be risk assessed to make sure that it is suitable. If it isn’t and you suffer injury, you are entitled to be compensated.
Your employer should provide you with somewhere to store the PPE as well to make sure that it is kept free from defect.
You should have been trained how to do your job. If you have not and you are injured then you are entitled to be compensated.
Training should be suitable for your needs and your employer should keep records of your training.
If you are injured at work, make sure that there is a report of the accident made in writing. If there is no accident book, write to your employer stating how the accident happened and how you were injured and send the letter by recorded delivery. Keep a copy.
If there is an accident book, make sure if you can that you make the entry. Don’t let someone else do it for you and ask for a copy to be given to you. Employers have been known to put down a false entry either deliberately or simply by mistake. This then makes any claim very difficult.
If you need treatment following an accident and go either to your hospital or GP, you should tell them how it happened clearly and ask to see the entry that they have made. You are ENTITLED to see your own medical records. Medical staff are always busy and it has been known for the wrong set of facts to be written down. The insurers will want to see these notes and they will not believe your claim if the records say one thing and you say something else.
Contributory Negligence
Courts and insurers look at liability for accidents in percentage terms. If you are totally to blame then you are 100% to blame. However if you are only half to blame then you are 50% to blame. Being partly to blame is sometimes called by lawyers “contributory negligent”. If your injury is worth £10,000 and you are to blame 50% (or 50% contributory negligent) then you will only receive half of your damages.
If you put your hand under a guard on a machine and suffer injury your employer will be partly to blame as the guard is inadequate but you also will be contributory negligent for putting your hand there in the first place. Other examples of contributory negligence at work are:-
Failing to wear protective clothing
Not cleaning up a spillage that you later slip on
Walking into or falling over an object that you should have seen
Using the wrong tools
Using a tool for the wrong job
Running in a factory or workplace
Failing to heed warnings
Not using equipment to prevent you from falling
Not looking where you are going
Not obeying signs in the workplace