England 23/07/2013 – Despite the best efforts of regulators, accidents and illnesses relating to work are still affecting over one million workers in the UK.
Things have improved greatly with fatal accidents being at their lowest rate ever, but people are still injuring themselves at work, or suffering from illness directly related to the work that they do.
The Health and Safety Executive report that an astonishing 1.1 million working people, in the UK, were suffering from a work related illness during 2011/12. Statistics for 2012/13 will be released in October, but the early indications are that the level of work related illness and injury will not have fallen by much. This is because many of the more serious work related illnesses like cancers, respiratory diseases and COPD take years to develop and emerge.
The application of modern Health and Safety standards means that the level of work related illness should eventually begin to level off, but it will be some time before that happens. In the meantime new cases of COPD and work related cancers will be diagnosed, which means increasing numbers of people will find themselves suing their former employers for damages. Many will visit the websites of solicitors who specialise in personal injury claims like http://www.jefferies-solicitors.com/, seeking help. This firm of solicitors has dealt with personal injury claims, of all kinds, for over 18 years. They have an experienced accident at work team, and a medical negligence team who combine their expertise to deal with claims related to illness arising from work activities. The firm has seen demand for their services in this area increase, gradually over the years and it is a trend that they expect to continue.
Musculoskeletal injuries are declining
The team at Jefferies Solicitors deal with all kinds of work related claims, but a lot of them are related to musculoskeletal injuries, such as RPS and back injuries. This is not surprising when you consider that the HSE recorded 141,000 such injuries in just one year. However, in the long run the number of these claims should also begin to tail off. The number of reported musculoskeletal injuries has fallen year on year for the past 10 years, so naturally the number of claims made for these injuries will, at some point, begin to fall too.