It is difficult to give specific examples of accidents at work compensation claims as they are incredibly varied.

Your employer, at common law, has a duty to take reasonable care of the health and safety of its employees in all the circumstances of the case and not to expose them to unnecessary risks.

The common law duty is a personal, non-delegable duty and cannot be discharged by entrusting the safety of one employee to another, or to an independent contractor. The standard of care is determined by the requirements of reasonableness, which requires the employers to assess the potential risk of injuries as against the harm it would cause the employee and the costs of putting safety precautions in place.

The duty is owed to the individual employees, so the standard of the duty of care will vary depending on the circumstances of the case. For example, if an employee only has one eye then his risk of injury is a relevant consideration in determining what precautions an employer should take. The greater the danger, the higher the degree of care expected from the employer.

To Satisfy the Common Law Duty, An Employer Must:

1. Provide safe premises and safe places to work
2. Provide safe plant, materials and equipment
3. Provide a safe system of work and safe working practices
4. Provide competent fellow staff

Accidents at Work Compensation Claims Example 1: Safe premises

An employers duty is to provide safe premises, those owned or occupied by the employer as well as those owned by third parties where its employees are expected to work temporarily. The employer is under a duty to act reasonably to ensure the premises are safe, in particular employers must ensure that floors and means of access are safe and do not cause a danger to employees.

An example of an accident at work would be such as at a building site where there are accessible ways to travel between sites A and B, but on the access road, there is debris being left there by another employee or another employer, which causes someone to trip over a plank of wood etc.

Accidents at Work Compensation Claims Example 2: Safe Plants, Materials and Equipment

The employer is under a duty to provide their staff with an adequate plant, which can include all types of machinery and equipment as well as materials, and subsequently maintain the plant. The employer must have proper systems in place for inspecting the plant sufficiently and regularly ensuring an effective reporting and repairing regime, for instructing and where necessary supervising workers in the appropriate use and proper maintenance.

Accidents will often occur, either because an insufficient plant was originally provided or what was supplied was either inadequate or defective. When considering whether the plant was properly maintained, the Court will look at the current working practice and regularity of any inspections.

An example in these circumstances would be where a fellow employee is using a diamond cutter blade to cut pieces of concrete. The blade comes loose and releases thus injuring a fellow employee.

Accidents at Work Compensation Claims Example 3: A Safe System of Working and Safe Working Practices

Whether an employer is complying with its common law duty to provide a safe system of work is a question of fact. In assessing whether a safe system of work was in place, the Court will consider:

1. The physical layout of the plant
2. The manner and sequence in which the work was carried out
3. Whether staff were provided with the training and instruction
4. Whether suitable warning notices were in place.

For example, it may be that a factory failed to place sufficient warning signs as to the use of burning or hot materials to put the employees on notice that there was a risk of burning.

Accidents at Work Compensation Claims Example 4: Competent Fellow Staff

The employee is under a duty to take reasonable care to provide an employee with competent fellow members of staff. There may be a common law obligation on an employer to remove a fellow employee who persistently engages in potentially dangerous behaviour.

In assessing whether the employer has complied with this duty it is important to look at whether they undertook a reasonable assessment of the employee’s competence or experience in the time that they were recruited or during regular assessments.

An example of this would be at a warehouse, where a fellow employee is driving a palette truck and fails to notice another worker walking along the access path and knocks him/her over.

 If you require our assistance or wish to check if you can make a claim, get in touch with our expert Personal Injury Team today on 0114 3583134 or email us via our contact page.