Your Employer's Duty of Care: What the Law Requires

Every employer in the UK has a legal obligation to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their employees. This is a legal requirement — and a failure to meet it can give rise to a compensation claim if a worker is injured as a result.

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974

The primary piece of legislation is the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Section 2 places a general duty on every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and welfare of all their employees. That duty is broken down into five specific obligations. Employers must provide:

1. Safe plant and systems of work — equipment that is maintained, and work processes designed to minimise risk
2. Safe use of articles and substances — safe handling, storage, and transport
3. Information, instruction, training, and supervision — so workers know the risks and how to work safely
4. A safe workplace — including safe access and exit
5. A safe working environment — with adequate welfare facilities

These duties apply from your first day and cover part-time, agency, and young workers. The Act also protects contractors, visitors and, in some cases, members of the public affected by the business, and places duties on the self-employed.

'So far as is reasonably practicable' means employers must weigh the risk against the cost and difficulty of controlling it. The law does not require employers to eliminate every conceivable risk — but the greater and more foreseeable the risk, the more is expected, and cost alone rarely excuses failing to deal with a serious hazard.

In practice, most compensation claims rely on the more detailed regulations made under the 1974 Act, because they set out specific, checkable duties — but the Act’s general duty remains the backbone behind all of them.

What employers are required to do

Risk assessments

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a “suitable and sufficient” assessment of the risks to employees and anyone else affected by the work. A proper assessment identifies the real hazards of the actual job (not a generic template), who could be harmed and how, and the control measures needed. Employers with five or more employees must record the significant findings in writing, and the assessment must be reviewed when circumstances change or after an accident exposes a gap.

Having a risk assessment on paper does not protect an employer if its control measures were never put into practice. A missing assessment for work that clearly needed one is strong evidence of a breach, and an assessment that failed to cover a hazard it reasonably should have identified can be just as significant. You still need to show the failure caused or contributed to your accident. Useful evidence includes a copy of the assessment (your solicitor can request it), what training you actually received, photographs of the hazard, and whether colleagues had raised concerns before.

Training and supervision

Employers must provide adequate training and supervision to ensure workers can carry out their jobs safely. This is particularly important for new employees, young workers, and anyone asked to carry out an unfamiliar task.

Personal protective equipment

Under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992, where a risk cannot be adequately controlled by other means, employers must provide suitable PPE — hard hats, safety boots, gloves, goggles, hearing protection — free of charge. The duty goes further than handing it over. Employers must:

• make sure it fits the individual worker (ill-fitting gloves, boots or harnesses can fail or create new risks)
• maintain, repair and replace it when it is damaged or worn
• train workers in why it is needed, how to use it, and its limits
• take reasonable steps, such as supervision, to make sure it is actually worn

PPE is the last line of defence. An employer who relies on PPE alone for a hazard that could reasonably have been removed or reduced through safer equipment or systems of work may not have met their duty. If you were not wearing PPE when you were hurt, you may still be able to claim — see what happens if your employer says the accident was your fault.

These duties come from a group of regulations often called the six pack health and safety regulations.

Safe equipment and machinery

Employers must ensure all work equipment is suitable, properly maintained, and used only by trained workers. This duty arises under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER) — see our machinery accident guide.

Manual handling

The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 require employers to avoid hazardous manual handling where possible, assess remaining manual handling tasks, and take steps to reduce injury risk — see our manual handling guide.

Work at height

The Work at Height Regulations 2005 require employers to plan, organise and supervise any work at height and to use equipment that minimises the risk of a fall — see fall from height claims.

Reporting and recording

Employers have a duty to record workplace accidents in an accident book and, in certain circumstances, to report them to the HSE under RIDDOR 2013 — see the accident book and RIDDOR.

Common breaches of an employer’s duty

• No risk assessment for a known hazard, or one that was never acted on
• Defective, poorly maintained or unsuitable equipment
• No manual handling training before heavy lifting
• Missing, unsuitable or ill-fitting PPE
• Work at height without proper equipment, planning or supervision
• Unsafe floors, walkways and access routes
• Inadequate supervision of young or inexperienced workers
• Ignoring complaints, near misses or previous incidents that warned of the hazard

What may happen if an employer failed to protect you

If your employer failed to take these steps and you were injured as a result, you may have grounds for a compensation claim. You need to show three things: your employer owed you a duty of care (every employer does), they breached it, and the breach caused your injury. Your employer does not have to have intended any harm.

1. Identify the specific failure. Was the floor wet and unmarked? Was the equipment faulty? Were you asked to lift without training?
2. Check whether your employer knew about the risk. Previous accidents, near-miss reports, complaints and maintenance records show whether a hazard was foreseeable.
3. Connect the failure to your injury. Sometimes this is obvious; where it is not, a solicitor can advise on causation. Evidence gathered early matters — see the evidence guide.

HSE enforcement is separate: the HSE can inspect, issue improvement or prohibition notices, and prosecute, but a criminal prosecution is not your compensation claim. Your civil claim can go ahead whether or not the HSE takes any action.