Being injured at work can have terrible, long-term consequences.
Those who suffer life-changing injuries may be unable to return to their jobs and will need lifelong care. Even avoidable injuries from which the victim will eventually recover can disrupt lives physically, emotionally and financially for long periods.
If someone is injured due to negligence by their employer, then the law says they are entitled to compensation to help them get their lives back on track.
Figures from the Health and Safety Executive’s labour force survey show that more workers than ever are injured or become ill due to their jobs. In 2024-25 some 854,000 people suffered a work-related injury or illness in Great Britain that resulted in them having to take more than seven days off.
Despite the large numbers of people hurt at work, the number of injured workers who make a claim for compensation is comparatively small, and is dropping further.
While the number of injured workers has risen by 34 per cent since 2018-19, during the same period the number of claims for compensation fell by 51 per cent. It is clear that an unsettling ‘justice gap’ has opened up in which victims of avoidable workplace injury are not receiving redress.
Not all workplace injuries will be due to negligence, of course. Some injuries will be as a result of an accident, which no-one could have foreseen or be held responsible. But when the harm could and should have been avoided, workers need and deserve full and fair redress to try to help them get back to where they were before the negligence.
Latest data indicates that just five per cent of injured or ill workers make a claim for compensation. Amongst the remaining 95 per cent will be many harmed workers who should have been protected.
To identify the potential causes of the justice gap, APIL conducted a survey among experienced lawyers involved in workplace injury claims. It concluded that there are multiple barriers to a claim for compensation. We have now briefed MPs, as part of our on-going wider work on access to justice, about the findings on the mountain that injured workers have to climb.
The reason for the justice gap is multi-faceted, lawyers say.
Making a claim can seem intimidating, especially if it is against your employer. There’s the fear of biting the hand that feeds them, so to speak. Workers are often put off pursuing a compensation claim out of concern about losing their jobs. They can feel like they are risking their livelihoods, despite laws to protect workers from this type of dismissal.
Workers can also, simply, not know that they have a right to claim. And suffering a serious injury can be very complex emotionally, which prevents people from taking the step towards claiming redress.
They might blame themselves, or be scared of not being believed. This leads me on to another issue. Some defendants’ insurers make tactical, unfounded allegations against claimants of lying or exaggerating their injuries. It is abuse of the rules of what is known as ‘fundamental dishonestly’, and is an attempt to intimidate claimants into dropping their cases.
A change to the law - the introduction of section 69 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 - took away the statutory right to compensation that workers have if their employer breaches health and safety regulations. Now workers have much more to prove, and must rely almost exclusively on complex common law for their claim to succeed. This is especially challenging in workplace cases, where employers always have the upper hand because they control the workplace, the equipment, the systems, and hold all the information.
Another barrier to claims is the fixed recoverable legal costs system. The system was introduced in England and Wales to create certainty and transparency about the legal costs which can be recovered from the wrongdoer.
But the costs are way out of step, having not changed since 2013, and have failed to even keep pace with inflation. It means the costs incurred by a victims’ legal representative when trying to help them, can outweigh the costs they will be able to recover if the claim is successful.
In essence they do not cover the full cost of the work involved by law firms. It means that some cases, however meritorious, have become economically unfeasible for lawyers to take on.
Injured workers must have a clear and simple route to redress instead of the current complicated and stressful process.
Full and fair compensation for injured victims of negligence is a cornerstone in a fair and modern society. Justice is of benefit to all those within that society, by being an economic enabler. Compensation, and access to rehabilitation and treatment are key to better and quicker recoveries. It paves the way for people to get back to work, puts families back on track, and prevents them from being forced to turn to the welfare state to survive.