If you are self employed and have been injured in the course of your work you have an obvious dilemma when it comes to making a compensation claim: who should you make the claim against?
Health and safety rules are designed to protect workers from the negligence of their employers. If you are your own boss, and therefore responsible for your own safety, can you really sue yourself? The answer is obviously "no".
This means that someone like a freelance writer, who works for himself in the comfort of his own home, cannot blame anyone else if he did not take the necessary precautions to prevent himself from developing repetitive strain injury from working at the computer.
However, this is not the case for certain professions and in certain circumstances.
Contractors
Many of the self employed do not work from home: they are contracted to work in client's offices, or in factories, or on construction sites. In this type of situation, different rules apply.
The health and safety rules that protect workers in a workplace also protect other people in that workplace, such as visitors, contractors and suppliers. This means that if you are injured while working as a contractor for another business, you may be entitled to make a compensation claim against them for your injury.
Examples of the kinds of worker who may be able to claim include the following:
- Construction workers
- Electricians
- Agriculture workers
- Plumbers
- Roofers
- Joiners
- Scaffolders
- Groundworkers
Whatever the case, you will have to show that the employer you had the contract with, or the person in control of the premises in which you were working, owed you a duty of care, and breached that duty of care.
It is a complicated area.
Self-employed worker injury claims
If you have been injured in a workplace accident and are not sure whether you have a valid claim for compensation, why not give us a call on 0800 0891331 and talk things over for free with one of our work injury experts.
There is no obligation, and we have a no win no fee package available if you wish to take things further. We win more than 90% of the cases we take on and each week secure around £1 million in compensation for our clients.
