Up and down the country on a daily basis people sit down to work – it is perhaps taken for granted that you sit down at your desk or at your work station in whichever job you do and start your daily jobs. However, we also take it for granted that, whilst we are sat at work, we are relatively safe from being injured, we are less likely to trip over a colleague’s bag or a trailing wire for a start. But what if the cause of our injury is the very chair that you sit on every day?
You may think it is unlikely to happen but more and more people are being injured as a result of chairs at work collapsing or breaking when they are being sat on. The question is; what can you do about it?
Well, it is your employer’s responsibility under section 2, Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to provide you with adequate equipment to allow you to do your job and to keep you safe from hazards that they are able to prevent. Therefore, if you do a job that requires sitting at a desk your employer should provide you with a chair that allows you to do this safely.
In order to fulfil this obligation an employer should ensure that they have regular and routine inspection and maintenance systems in place. Their responsibilities do not end there though as they also have an obligation to make sure that the equipment you use while at work, in this case a chair, is safe, properly maintained and regularly serviced.
This means that if your employer is taking their office chairs for granted and allowing them to fall into disrepair then there may be grounds for making a claim if you are injured as a result. You would need to prove that you were using the chair appropriately and that the fault in the chair caused you to fall – but if you can do this then you could have a claim against your employer for not keeping you safe in the workplace.
So if you have been injured through a faulty or ill-maintained chair in the workplace then you should get expert personal injury law advice to see if you have a claim. At The Injury Lawyers our advice is given free and without obligation so call today and find out if you could claim.
