How Using Safety PAL Succesfully Prevented A £25k Injury Claim

Joanne; Company Director and Safety PAL client explains how she defended a £25k injury claim – no fees and no costs

On the morning of the 30th June 2020, we received an injury claim email from an Award-winning Top 200 UK law firm which specialises in helping injured people claim damages in connection with accidents.

The email contained a letter (front page shown below) requesting damages of more than £25,000.00 for an employee who was injured during his employment at Pinball Metals Ltd. my company.

The letter also stated as an employer; I failed to meet 16 individual health and safety regulations (some are shown in the below letter extract).

The claimant’s name was at the top of the letter, and shockingly he was at work today – a current employee.

What was I feeling?

My initial response was one of panic then anger; this guy was at work today.

I also thought, how much is it going to cost me to defend this £25,000.00 employee injury claim and will I succeed – This was a top 200 law firm?

The six-page letter continually referenced how my company failed to make any suitable and sufficient assessment of risk and how we failed to make effective arrangements as were appropriate.

As the director/duty holder, the letter also concluded, I had failed to identify any preventative or protective measures as legally required.

I was shocked, angry, frightened; all these emotions were rushing around in my head.

How did I get the situation under control?

I contacted Safety PAL (PLAN ACT LEARN), we used Safety PAL for all our health and safety management.

I feel we have an excellent safety culture, and workers always look like they are working safely. I see alerts, risk assessments and method statements for all of our sites and jobs from the Safety PAL system, so surely they can help?

Our Safety PAL account manager was Karl Spencer.

Both Karl and I spent a few minutes on the Safety PAL system, getting the information required to prove we complied with the individual regulations referenced in the solicitor’s letter.

My confidence soon grew, as I could see we had all the health and safety information needed to prove my company was meeting the required health and safety standards, and I as the director/duty holder had done so far as is reasonably practicable in preventing harm (thanks Karl).

I spoke at length with my site manager Graham, who was passionate about using Safety PAL for recording and managing all our health and safety requirements. He knew what information was needed and put together an individual statement, which along with the employee competence records and job records were sent to our insurance broker.

How our broker and insurer received the data?

Our broker was in touch within two days stating they have sent everything on to our insurer.

The first view of the case was in our favour as we had a plethora of date time-stamped evidence recorded and obtained from our safety management system Safety PAL. Vital for proving our employee was trained and he understood the risk assessment and method of operations.

A few days later, the insurer assigned an assessor (loss adjustor) to investigate further due to the size of the injury claim.

The assessor was granted access to Safety PAL as a guest user, and a site visit was arranged for him to complete his own assessment of the workplace. I asked Safety PAL to attend as this gave me confidence.

Safety PAL arranged the site visit, both Graham and Karl showed the assessor the employee health and safety records and then a brief tour of our site.

The assessor did express surprise with the level of safety and wellbeing on one of our busiest sites – I suspect he sees all levels of danger and risk and many companies don’t tend to have health and safety covered as we do.

The assessor left with a high level of confidence that we complied with legislation and the £25k injury claim would not be paid.

Producing evidence and closing out the case was very quick.

I understand an injury claim and process like this can take months and even years. This may be true, but in this instance, it took just a few weeks.

Our insurance broker confirmed to us on the 12th August that the insurer’s assessor (Loss Adjuster) confirmed he had repudiated the claim and forwarded the denial of liability to the claimant’s conditional fee solicitor, along with all the supporting evidence.

When we heard the good news, I and my team felt success and relief.

We used Safety PAL to prevent injury (as the law states we must do). Still, as director and duty holder, I realised by having the evidence and proof, I was protected.

Graham uses Safety PAL as an integral part of our team to ensure everyone is working safely and are COVID Secure; Safety PAL allows us to do this effectively and efficiently.

Don’t just assume

As a company director, I can’t express enough that even though you think you are managing health and safety well, you need proof.

Get involved from the top, speak with your managers and ask them to provide the evidence workers have read risk assessments, have regularly updated training sufficient for the task and all the associated health and PPE checks needed under this uncertain time of the COVID-19 pandemic – With Safety PAL Graham and I have a full overview and real-time data.

My proof and protection came from implementing a superior system like Safety PAL.

Other health and safety positives with Safety PAL

In successfully defending this injury claim, we did not incur any legal fees, we did not record any downtime of the business or of its managers.

I didn’t have to pay any insurance excess and are not expecting any increase for our 2021 insurance premium.

Furthermore, Safety PAL never applied for any additional costs – All part of the service our account manager said.

The insurers also stated they would investigate applying a discount to our 2021 insurance renewal.