How is my company affected by injury claim?

Advice1234

Hi all

Hoping to get some advice. 
I have a relatively new company ( roofing) 2 years old I have insurance. 6 people within the company 2 are directors.

Recently we had a claim made for a personal injury claim this was made by an ex employee (disgruntled I believe)  who I had to sack due to conduct (on phone all the time not doing work etc) . We are all self employed the accident happened around October last year ( he fell from a ladder and his ankle twisted ) hospital attended  and he was off work around 6 weeks (unpaid but he claimed income support or JSA) .He then came on the works Christmas do on the 20 Dec and then returned back to work until around May 2023. I then unfortunately had to sack end of June and I paid 2 weeks extra pay whilst he looked for another job and even left him with a full years insurance on his van. 

He has then made a claim against us for an injury to his ankle claiming PPE lack of training  etc. We employed him as a driver / tidy up sites and did not once advise him to go up a ladder as he was always with a skilled roofer.
We were naive being a completely new company and have no paper work to confirm training / ppe register  /accident book which our insurance is asking for. 

What is going to happen here if our insurance does not cover and get cancelled ? We are seriously how to handle this situation and were completely naive to how much paper work/signatures is needed for such a small company with everyone being self employed is needed for this kind of thing. We have tried to reach out to offer a private settlement.

It has been mentioned that our insurance could possibly cancel and we would not be able to get insured again I have children to support and I am so worried.

Any advice / experience would be greatly appreciated. 

Advice1234

						See explanation overleaf
Loss of earnings details
Accident Book entry
First Aider report
Incident report
RIDDOR form
Communications between Defendant/HSE
Health and Safety Policy
Health and Safety Committee Meeting Minutes
Internal Investigative report
Pre-accident risk assessment
Post-accident risk assessment
Maintenance records
Inspection records
Job specifications
Method statement
Contract documentation
Training records
Machine specifications
Instruction manual
Job description
CCTV footage

DullGreyGuy

For a start you cannot be all self employed if you have two directors... they at a minimum must be employees of the company. 

When you bought your insurance were you asked about having a HSE policy? If not, were you made aware of any special endorsements about these things? Just doing a dummy quote on Simply Business for a roofing business I note that its flagged that each policy has endorsements requiring a HSE Policy, a documented risk assessment before commencing a job, documented training and documented provision of PPE and enforcement of using it. 

If you had similar and have failed to comply with the endorsements then it's more likely the claim is declined rather than the policy voided, unless you made false declarations when buying the insurance. 

Advice1234

@DullGreyGuy thanks for the response and advice greatly appreciated 

honestly I can’t recall I will need to go back and check we have gone from being roofers to having a company handed down to us and having no clue! It’s been hard work to even get it all set up we may have mislooked some paperwork 

we have a meeting with the insurance guy next week is it worth going through what we have in place now and if anything missing quickly get this together obviously this will be missing the signature now so not sure how this is going to affect us but I guess something is better than nothing 

I know we have a risk assessment where I went out and visited the site and took photos etc but I believe we are missing training as he was just a driver and ppe as this is provided by themselves so it didn’t even cross my mind I think this is probably where signatures are required 

if the claim is rejected I guess we may need to find a solicitor which may cost thousands 

DullGreyGuy

Advice1234 said:

if the claim is rejected I guess we may need to find a solicitor which may cost thousands 

Depends on the nature of their injury and how much compensation they are claiming... it certainly can be expensive and even if its in Fast Track, were you to win you are limited on what costs you can recover