Lifting and carrying injuries but I’ve been trained – can I still claim?

Lifting and carrying injuries but I’ve been trained – can I still claim?

When it comes to workplace accident claims, your employer has an important duty to adhere to The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 to ensure employees are not harmed when lifting and carrying in the workplace. These regulations are so important because getting lifting and carrying in the wrong way can easily lead to significant injuries.

Training is therefore key – but what if you have been trained but you have still been injured when lifting and carrying in the workplace? Can you still make a claim for personal injury compensation even if you have received proper and adequate training?

The key question – why did it happen?

There are scenarios where you can still make a claim even if you have been fully trained. Some common examples where your employer may still have breached the rules and are responsible for the injury can be:

• Injuries caused by excessive volumes of manual handling – e.g. repetitive strain injuries.
• Injuries caused by falling over or tripping due to the route being unsafe.
• Injuries caused by a colleague – e.g. if they were lifting a load with you and they suddenly dropped their end of the load.
• Injuries caused where equipment should or could have been used, and was accessible, to avoid the need for manual handling.

As such, it is certainly not impossible to make a claim for personal injury compensation if you are injured due to lifting and carrying at work even if you have been trained. It’s all circumstantial. Essentially if there was something that your employer could have done to have prevented the injury, there may be a claim to answer for.

How do employer claims work?

In most cases it’s a very simple process – we submit a Claim Notification Form to your employer or their insurers directly and they have 30 working days to either accept or deny liability. In the meantime we will arrange for you to be seen by a specialist medical expert who will write a report for us to use to value your claim.

If they accept liability, and once we have your report and evidence all together, we can look to settle the claim – it can be as simple as that!

For work accident compensation claims we offer our clients a 100% compensation agreement even though other lawyers will take 25% from your payout due to recent legal fee reforms. We also work on a No Win, No Fee basis as well so you won’t be charged if the claim doesn’t win.