In recent months, there have been a number of notable health and safety prosecutions that have taken place for injured staff, pupils, and members of the public in school injury claims. 

 

With the challenging circumstances that schools have been operating under for the past year, this has raised concerns that the general health and safety of the school environment has been compromised among the huge amount of covid related rules and added regulations. 

 

In June of this year, a high school was fined when a pupil died after a faulty stack of lockers fell on top of him. The locker unit, which was 180cm tall and weighed 188kg, should have been secured to the wall in order to prevent it from falling over, as the attached rackets were there for. However, this was not done by the school, and they subsequently fell on the young boy. 

 

The high school in Chelmsford were charged with breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and were fined £16,700, and ordered to pay costs of £12,000. 

 

This comes as a stark reminder to schools and other education facilities that standard health and safety must be maintained, even amidst the extra strain and regulations that covid has had on schools. 

 

The Health and Safety Executive inspector in the case stated that “This incident could easily have been prevented had the school simply ensured the locker unit had been securely fixed to the wall, however it had failed to identify the risk associated with the potential for the unit to topple over and to put in place appropriate monitoring arrangements to ensure that it stayed secure”. 

 

Earlier this year, a school employee fell from height leading to a prosecution against the school in question. Our personal injury solicitors know just how important it is for schools and all businesses alike to comply with the Health and Safety Work Act of 1974. 

 

This Act is in place to protect all employees, pupils, and visitors to business and company premises, and puts a huge amount of responsibility on the employer to maintain safe conditions. 

Our personal injury solicitors regularly work on school injury claims for both employees and pupils alike. If you are looking to make an accident at work claim of any kind, no matter how big or small, for an injury that occurred when working in a school, then contact our accident at work solicitors today. See our overview of teacher accident at work claims here. Our team offer a free, no-obligation discussion to all potential clients, and can be easily reached, here, or by phone at 01772 783314. 

 

To speak to our child injury solicitors, about a school injury claim, contact us here, or see our full page on school injury claims here. Child injury claims can also be made for injuries on the school playground or play area caused by negligence, see more on this here. 

 

Our team of personal injury solicitors have a success rate in over 99% of the NO WIN NO FEE claims that we accept, and have over 30 years of experience in all types of injury claims.