By Chris Carter, Managing Solicitor  |  March 2026  |  Accidents at Work

There’s a category of workplace injury that doesn’t make the front page. No machinery entanglement. No scaffold collapse. No dramatic fall from a rooftop. Just someone grabbing whatever’s handy to get a job done — and an employer who never stopped to ask whether that was safe.

That’s exactly what happened at a craft bakery in Bolton in April 2024. And that’s exactly why the Health and Safety Executive prosecuted them — and why a court agreed they were wrong.

What actually happened in this Bolton case?

A worker at a bakery site in Lostock, Bolton needed to dispose of food waste into a large skip. The skip was tall — too tall to reach from the ground. So the worker did what people do when there’s a job to get done and no proper equipment in sight: they stood on a large plastic pallet box.

They fell. They fractured their hip.

An HSE investigation found that the bakery had failed to carry out a suitable risk assessment for the skip-loading task, hadn’t provided any appropriate access equipment, and — crucially — had allowed this improvised way of working to become routine. The unsafe practice hadn’t crept in overnight. It had become commonplace because nobody in authority had ever checked, questioned, or stopped it.

The bakery pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. At Tameside Magistrates’ Court on 13 March 2026, it was fined £16,667 and ordered to pay costs of £4,333 and a victim surcharge of £2,000 — a total bill of over £23,000. The case was reported by the Health and Safety Executive.

Why does standing on a pallet box make the employer legally liable?

This is where a lot of people get the wrong idea about how workplace injury law actually works.

Working at height doesn’t mean working on a rooftop or a scaffold. Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005, work at height means any activity where a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury. That includes standing on a pallet box in a warehouse. It includes stepping onto any improvised surface.

The height from which you fall doesn’t need to be dramatic for the law to apply — it needs to be capable of causing injury. A fall from a pallet box absolutely qualifies.

The employer’s duty under Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of every employee. That includes assessing the risks involved in routine tasks — not just the obvious ones — and providing suitable equipment to carry them out safely. A set of safe steps or a mobile platform costs very little. A hip fracture costs a great deal more.

The detail that makes this case particularly telling is the finding about supervision. This wasn’t an isolated lapse. Workers had been improvising access to that skip for long enough that it had become the accepted way of doing things. That tells the court — and tells any civil claim — that the employer had either known about the practice and ignored it, or should have known about it and failed to find out. Either way, liability follows.

What are your rights if you’ve been injured doing something routine at work?

The fact that a task felt ordinary doesn’t change the legal position. What matters is whether your employer met their obligations — and in most routine-task injury cases, at least one of three things has gone wrong.

Either the risk wasn’t assessed, the right equipment wasn’t provided, or supervision failed to catch a working practice that shouldn’t have been allowed to develop. Any of those failures is enough to support a claim.

You have three years from the date of your accident to bring a personal injury claim under the Limitation Act 1980. If you’re unsure whether enough time remains, or whether what happened to you meets the threshold, speak to a solicitor early — not because you need to rush, but because the evidence is easier to gather when it’s fresh.

How much compensation could a hip fracture at work be worth?

A hip fracture is a serious injury. Compensation in cases like this is assessed individually — it depends on the severity of the break, the surgery required, how long recovery takes, whether there’s any lasting mobility impact, and what effect the injury has had on your earnings and daily life.

The Judicial College Guidelines — the framework courts use when assessing general damages — place serious hip injuries in a range that reflects the long-term nature of the harm. Where surgery is involved, where recovery is prolonged, or where there are ongoing mobility problems, figures are assessed accordingly. On top of general damages, your claim can include lost earnings while you were off work, any future loss if you can’t return to the same role, and medical expenses.

For a straightforward workplace injury claim — where liability is clear and medical evidence is in order — settlement typically takes four to eight months. Cases involving more complex injury or disputed liability take longer. We’ll give you an honest assessment at the outset.