They Had the Risk Assessment. They Just Never Fixed It.

Posted on 17 March 2026 in Accident at Work claims, Blog

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

He walked through the safety gate into the fenced area. The gate was there to protect him — to halt the frames from moving while workers were inside. That was what the company believed it did. That was what every worker on that production line had been led to believe.

It didn’t. A one-tonne metal frame, already in motion on the section of track behind the gate, rolled forward. By the time it reached the section where the worker was standing, there was no warning and nowhere to go. A colleague saw what was happening and hit the emergency stop. The frames had already done their damage.

The worker — a father of three — spent two weeks in hospital. Surgery was needed to repair a broken leg: metal rod, screws, months of physiotherapy. He couldn’t return to work for over a year. And when the Health and Safety Executive investigated, something came to light that separated this case from most: the company had known about the danger. In writing. For years.

What Does It Actually Mean — Legally — If Your Employer Knew About the Risk?

“They knew” isn’t just something people say when they’re angry after an accident. In law, it has precise meaning. When an employer ignores a risk assessment that identified the danger — and an injury happens as a result — that ignored document becomes direct evidence of negligence. Their words. Their conclusions. Filed away while the danger continued unchanged.

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 doesn’t simply require employers to look for risks. It requires them to do something about what they find. A risk assessment that reaches the right conclusions and then gets filed away, while the danger it describes continues unchanged, is not compliance. In many cases, it is the clearest available evidence that the duty wasn’t met.

When a claim proceeds through the legal process, disclosure can be requested. Risk assessments, near-miss logs, inspection records, internal safety audits — the employer’s own documents can be examined. They have a habit of telling a different story from “we did everything we reasonably could.”

What Actually Happened at the Essex Manufacturing Plant?

In July 2022, a worker at a national building materials manufacturer’s production facility in Essex entered a fenced area to clean and inspect metal frames. The frames carry large blocks through the manufacturing process on an internal trackway. To enter the cleaning area, workers passed through an interlocked safety gate — designed to prevent the frames from moving while someone was inside the zone.

The gate stopped power on the section of track where the worker was standing. It did not stop power on the preceding section. Another frame moved along the trackway into that area and struck him. His legs were pinned between the two frames as they continued to move. The colleague who hit the emergency stop button in time prevented worse. Without that intervention, the HSE later noted, the injuries could have been even more severe.

The investigation found two facts that defined what followed. First, the interlocked gate had never actually prevented the preceding section of track from operating — a critical design failure that had gone unaddressed for years. Second, there had been multiple near misses on the same section of the production line, in similar circumstances, before this incident occurred. None of them had prompted the fixes that were needed.

Why Do Near Misses Matter So Much to a Workplace Injury Claim?

A near miss is a moment when something almost went wrong. Nobody was hurt — that time. In health and safety law, a near miss is also a warning the employer received and was legally required to act on. When they don’t, and the same failure eventually causes a real injury, the near miss becomes part of the evidence record.

The HSE’s own guidance is clear: near misses must be investigated with the same seriousness as actual accidents. They indicate that existing controls are not working. They create documentation. And if that documentation shows an employer was aware of recurring failures in a specific area and did nothing, it becomes very difficult for them to argue the eventual injury was unforeseeable.

In this Essex case, the investigation found multiple near misses on the same section of the production line. These were not unknown events. They had been preceded, years earlier, by a risk assessment that explicitly identified the need for “additional control measures to reduce risk to an acceptable level.” That assessment sat on a shelf. The controls were not put in place. Until someone was seriously hurt.

What Happened to the Company in Court?

The manufacturer pleaded guilty at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court in January 2026. The Health and Safety Executive had brought the prosecution following an investigation it described as revealing “a serious and entirely avoidable incident” with “profound consequences” for the worker concerned.

The fine was £633,300, plus £5,583 in prosecution costs and a £2,000 victim surcharge.

The HSE inspector’s comment after sentencing was pointed: employers must ensure that dangerous machinery is guarded effectively, and that monitoring must be ongoing. Not just at installation. Not just when something goes wrong. Constantly — because near misses are warnings, and warnings exist to be acted on.

The additional controls that had been recommended in the company’s own risk assessment — the controls they had identified as necessary years before the incident — were finally put in place after the worker was hurt.

What Could Compensation Cover in a Case Like This?

Serious leg injuries — fractures requiring surgical repair, weeks in hospital, extended time off work, prolonged physiotherapy — have consequences that vary considerably from person to person. Compensation in cases of this kind is assessed individually, not against a fixed scale, because what a person loses goes well beyond the injury itself.

A workplace injury claim can cover both the injury (the pain, the limitations, the long-term effect on quality of life) and the practical consequences: lost earnings during recovery, any ongoing medical or treatment costs, and the impact on daily life. Where the injury has been serious or has a lasting effect, both elements of the claim can be significant.

What we can offer, before you commit to anything, is an honest conversation about what your specific circumstances support. In cases where an employer’s documented failure is part of the picture, the claims process often proceeds more straightforwardly than in disputes built on contested facts alone. We’ll tell you plainly what we think — and what we don’t.

Is There a Time Limit on Making a Workplace Injury Claim?

Yes. In most cases you have three years from the date of the accident to bring a personal injury claim. For workplace injuries, the limitation period starts on the day you were hurt. Miss it, and even a strong claim may no longer be possible.

Three years feels comfortable. In practice, evidence moves fast. Colleagues change jobs. Documents get archived — or, in some cases, disappear during a company restructure. The sooner a solicitor can review what happened and preserve the right information, the stronger your position. If you’re unsure whether you’re still within the time limit, a call costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.