How To Make An Agency Worker Compensation Claim

Welcome to our guide on making an agency worker accident claim. As an agency worker, you may be wondering, if you get into an accident, who is your claim made against? Do I have the same rights as company employees? And what compensation could I be entitled to?

We examine all these questions and more on this page. You will also see a compensation table with guideline amounts for various injuries.

Towards the end of our guide, we look at the No Win No Fee contract offered by our panel of highly experienced solicitors. You can get a zero cost eligibility assessment, as well as answers to any questions you may have by talking to our advisors.

Get in touch today via the contact information given here:

• Call our team on 020 3870 4868.
• Contact us by completing the callback form.
• Open the live chat window on your screen now.

Select a Section

1. Do Agency Workers Have The Same Rights As Other Employees?
2. Can I Make An Agency Worker Accident Claim?
3. Who Would You Claim Against?
4. How Could You Be Injured While Working?
5. Time Limits In Agency Worker Accident Claims
6. How Much Compensation Could I Get For An Accident At Work?
7. Can UKLaw Help Me Make An Agency Worker Accident Claim?
8. Learn More

Do Agency Workers Have The Same Rights As Other Employees?

Yes they do. Whether employed as an agency worker or a full time company employee, you are entitled to certain rights and protections in your job. Agency workers are treated as equal to full employees from a health and safety perspective.

What Is The Health And Safety At Work Etc. Act 1974?

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is a law that imposes a duty of care on employees to take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of their workforce. A duty of care refers to a legal responsibility to keep someone safe.

As we examine below, failing to uphold a duty of care can result in an accident in which injuries are sustained, and an accident at work claim could be made. 

Can I Make An Agency Worker Accident Claim?

The eligibility criteria for an agency worker accident claim have been summarised below:

1. You were owed a duty of care by your agency or the company you were contracted to work for.
2. This duty was breached in some way.
3. Consequently, an accident occurred in which you were injured.

You can get a free eligibility assessment by speaking to our advisory team today.

Who Would You Claim Against?

Predominantly, an agency worker accident claim would be made against the company you worked for at the time of the accident. However, a claim could also be made against the agency itself. It would depend on exactly what has happened, so call us for a free eligibility check.

How Could You Be Injured While Working?

Having established the duty of care owed to agency workers, we’re going to look at how breaches of that duty can result in injuries. While the duty to take reasonable steps to ensure worker safety will remain the same across different workplaces, how that duty is met will vary depending on the work being carried out.

Britain’s national regulatory body for health and safety, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), publish various resources on topics such as good training and preventing slips and trips, to help employers meet their legal obligations.

Examples of how an accident at work could occur can include:

• A failure to provide the correct training to you by a care home resulted in you attempting to lift a laundry bin that two people should have carried. You tore a ligament in your arm and sustained a shoulder fracture when trying to lift the heavy object.
• You were working as a day labourer on a construction site. The site manager had not cleared away the packaging for the building supplies. You tripped and fell over boxes while returning to your workstation after lunch, breaking your wrist and suffering a serious ankle sprain.
• An employer failed to provide suitable protective equipment in the form of a hard hat. A tool is dropped from height and hits you on the head.

Time Limits In Agency Worker Accident Claims

In most cases, there is a 3 year time limit imposed on personal injury claims. The Limitation Act 1980 established that claimants will have 3 years from the date of the incident to begin their claim.  There are, however, exceptions that apply in certain circumstances, these are:

• Minors: persons who were under 18 at the time of their accident will have the 3 years counted from the day they turn 18, giving until their 21st birthday to begin a claim.
• Persons without sufficient mental capacity: if an injured person does not have the capacity to claim on their own behalf, whether as a result of the accident or due to a pre-existing condition, then the time limit is halted altogether. In the event of a recovery, the 3 years are then counted from this date. 

In these scenarios, the injured person’s parent, legal guardian or other suitable adult can be appointed as their litigation friend. The litigation friend will have the authority to make decisions about the case and begin the claims process much sooner. 

You can learn more about the time limits in agency worker accident claims and check if any exceptions apply in your particular circumstances by speaking to our advisors. Get in touch using the contact information given below. 

How Much Compensation Could I Get For An Accident At Work?

Compensation in a successful agency worker accident claim can be awarded under two different heads of claim. We have set out the heads of claim below.

• Your physical and psychological injuries will be compensated under general damages.
• Financial harm stemming from your injuries can be compensated under special damages. More on this head of claim in a later section.

Those responsible for determining a general damages figure during your claim can refer to any medical evidence you have provided, alongside the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG). The JCG contains guideline compensation figures for a range of injuries. You can see a selection of these brackets in the table below.

Compensation Table

Please be advised that the top entry was not taken from the JCG and that this information has been provided for guidance purposes only.

Type of Injury	Severity	Guideline Compensation Amount
Multiple Very Serious Injuries with Additional Financial Harm	Very Serious	Up to £1,000,000 and above
Brain Damage	Moderate (c)(i)	£183,190 to £267,340
	Moderate (c)(ii)	£110,720 to £183,190
Back Injuries	Severe (a)(ii)	£90,510 to £107,910
	Severe (a)(iii)	£47,320 to £85,100
Wrist Injuries	Permanent Disability (b)	£29,900 to £47,810
	Less Severe (c)	£15,370 to £29,900
Scarring to Other Parts of the Body	Multiple Noticeable or One Disfiguring Scar (b)	£9,560 to £27,740
Shoulder Injuries	Serious (b)	£15,580 to £23,430
	Moderate (c)	£9,630 to £15,580

Special Damages In An Agency Worker Compensation Claim

As we said above, you could be reimbursed for the financial harm caused by your injuries under special damages. As well as accounting for immediate costs, special damages can also be awarded for ongoing and future losses. What this means is a special damages payout is often significantly higher than anything awarded for general damages.

Examples of costs you could claim compensation for include:

• A loss of earnings due to time taken off work to recover from your injuries, as well as future losses due to reduced hours.
• Medical expenses such as prescriptions, private treatment or counselling. 
• Transport costs if you can no longer drive.
• Modifications to your home if your mobility has been reduced. For example an accessible shower or entrance ramps.
• Care costs for support with looking after dependents, meal preparation, cleaning and household maintenance if you can no longer perform these tasks safely on your own.

Make sure you hold onto your payslips, as well other documents such as receipts, invoices and travel tickets as proof of the losses you have sustained. 

This section is intended to provide guidance on how personal injury compensation is calculated. All claims are assessed individually so we can’t definitely state what your claim would be worth. To get a free eligibility assessment and, if you have a valid claim, a more personalised idea of the compensation you could receive, talk to our team today. 

Can UKLaw Help Me Make An Agency Worker Accident Claim?

Our panel of expert personal injury solicitors have years of experience winning compensation for clients. While you are not required to use a solicitor for your claim, there are some key advantages to doing so. 

A solicitor could help you with:

• Collecting the right evidence for your claim.
• Explaining all the legal jargon.
• Ensuring all court deadlines and instructions are complied with.
• Calculating a potential damages figure.
• Negotiating on your behalf.

Our panel of solicitors can offer their services on a No Win No Fee basis with a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA). This particular contract gives very desirable benefits including:

• No fees to pay for the solicitor to commence work on the case,
• Not having to pay for that work done by your solicitor during the actual claims process,
• And finally, should the claim fail, you will not incur any fees for this work.

If your agency worker accident claim is a success, you will receive personal injury compensation. The solicitor’s success fee is deducted from the compensation award. As The Conditional Fee Agreements Order 2013 caps success fees at a maximum of 25%, you know you’ll keep the majority of any payout that is awarded.

Contact Us

Get in touch today via the contact information given here:

• Call our team on 020 3870 4868.
• Contact us by completing the callback form.
• Open the live chat window on your screen now.

Learn More

You can see some of our other personal injury claims guides here:

• Read our guide to manual handling claims by clicking this link.
• Find out how you know if your employer is responsible for a workplace injury by reading this guide.
• See our guidance on why it is important to report accidents in the workplace.

We have also provided some additional resources from external pages:

• Learn about what to do if you’re injured because of an accident at work with this resource from Citizens Advice.
• You can learn more about managing risks and risk assessment in the workplace with on this HSE page.
• Read the NHS information on shoulder pain on their website.

Thank you for taking the time to read our agency worker accident claim guide. To find out more about making a personal injury claim, or to get a free assessment of your eligibility to claim after an accident at work, talk to our team today using the contact information given above.