Accident at Work Claims
Every year in Scotland, nearly 3,000 people are killed or suffer serious injury at work. In addition, there are around 10,000 cases annually of Scottish workers having to take more than 3 days off because of work-related injuries. It’s a serious issue, often with significant consequences (both financial and non-financial) for those affected.
If you are injured at work in Scotland, you may be entitled to compensation from your employer because it has a general duty to take reasonable care for your safety and to use reasonable skill to:-
- provide you with the proper machinery and equipment to do your job
- maintain that machinery and equipment
- select competent people to work with you
- provide a proper system of working (this includes things like making sure that you’re shown the safe way to do a particular job, training you and your colleagues properly and providing you with suitable protective clothing where that’s appropriate)
In addition to these general duties, there are very detailed statutory duties covering all sorts of things, from the availability of drinking water in the workplace to the length of time that display screens should be used between breaks.
If your employer fails to do any of these things and, as a result, you have an accident at work in Scotland, you may be entitled to claim compensation. This is sometimes referred to as an industrial injuries claim.
In some circumstances, work accident claims can be successful even if the employer has not been at fault. That’s because Scottish law sometimes makes employers liable for injury at work even if they have not been negligent in looking after the welfare of their employees. By way of example, your employer can be liable if you are injured at work by a defective piece of equipment that has just been delivered by a supplier. Similarly, your employer may be liable if one of your fellow workers harms you whilst acting in the course of his/her employment.
Employers have all sorts of duties to their employees and these include duties about the workplace itself (ie the ventilation available, temperature control, changing facilities, adequate lighting, toilet facilities, the space available, the provision of suitable work stations and seating and many, many other things). A breach of any of those these duties by your employer may entitle you to compensation.
We are often asked whether accidents compensation is available for injury in circumstances where someone has not been physically injured at work but, instead, has suffered some type of mental harm (a common example of this is someone suffering from stress at work). The answer is “yes”. Your employer’s duty to take reasonable care to avoid you being hurt at work covers both physical and mental aspects but it is worth noting that, unlike some other types of work injury claim, compensation claims for work related stress can be very difficult and lawyers in Scotland are seldom prepared to take them forward under a no win no fee arrangement. That being so, stress claims usually need to be paid for using one of the other funding arrangements available.
Many of the people who contact us are worried about lodging a claim for compensation with their employer but, usually, there’s no need. The vast majority of employers are responsible people/organisations who take the welfare of their staff very seriously. They recognise that accidents and other mishaps will happen from time to time and they have insurance policies in place to make sure that their staff can be compensated when things do go wrong. That means your compensation (or most of it) will come from an insurance company and not be a cost that your employer has to pay.
If you are unsure whether you may have a valid compensation claim for injuries at work in Scotland, call us now on 08448 700 800 to discuss how we can help or simply fill in the CALL ME box and we’ll ring you. Alternatively, you can start your accidents at work claim immediately by answering a few simple questions on the CLAIM NOW page and we’ll do the rest.
Remember – If you have had an accident at work in Scotland, your claim is best dealt with by Scottish specialists and you won’t pay a penny for our help, whatever happens.