Farm Accident Compensation
Non-freezing cold injury (NFCI), frostbite and cold-related nerve damage
Farm claims are not like other workplace claims, mainly because so many people hurt on farms have no employer to claim against. Who you can bring a claim against depends on how you were working that day, and it is the first thing worth sorting out. We handle farm accident claims on a No Win No Fee basis.
Regulated solicitors
Years' experience
No Win No Fee
Who are you actually claiming against?
On most workplace claims this question answers itself. On a farm it does not, because a great many people working on farms are not employees. How you were working that day changes who the claim goes to, and it changes what has to be proved.
A claim against your employer
This is the straightforward route. Your employer owes you a duty of care, has to keep machinery safe and properly guarded, has to assess the work and train you for it, and is required by law to carry employers’ liability insurance. The claim is paid by that insurer rather than by the farm.
Several other routes, and it depends
There is no employers’ liability insurer, so the claim has to find another defendant. Depending on what happened that might be the occupier of the land, where the premises or the way work was organised were unsafe. It might be another business working the same site. It might be the maker or supplier of a machine that failed. Or it might be the keeper of an animal, which has its own rules.
Being self-employed does not put you outside the system. It changes who you are pointing at.
Visiting, delivering, or there for the day? A vet, a contractor, a delivery driver, a relief milker or a member of the public on a footpath is owed a duty by whoever occupies the land. That is a different claim again, and a common one. See public liability claims.
And the honest part. If you are self-employed, you were on your own land, and nobody else had anything to do with what happened, there may be no claim to bring. We would rather tell you that in one phone call than three months in.
Hurt by an animal?
You may not have to prove negligence
Most injury claims turn on showing that somebody was careless. Claims involving animals can work differently, and it is worth knowing about because almost nobody mentions it.
The Animals Act 1971 imposes what lawyers call strict liability on the keeper of an animal. Where it applies, the keeper is responsible for the damage the animal caused whether or not they did anything wrong. For animals of a dangerous species the keeper is simply liable. Cattle and horses are not classed as a dangerous species, so those claims run through a separate route with three conditions, and all three have to be met.
Put plainly, those conditions ask whether the animal was likely to cause damage of that kind or likely to cause severe damage; whether that likelihood came from a characteristic not normally found in that species, or not normally found except at particular times or in particular circumstances; and whether the keeper knew about that characteristic.
The middle condition is the one that matters on farms. A cow is placid most of the year and is a very different animal when she has a calf at foot. A bull is a bull. A herd being moved is not the same as a herd in a field. Where a keeper knew that and put someone in the way of it anyway, this route can succeed without any need to argue about training records or risk assessments. It is not automatic and the conditions are genuinely demanding, but it is a second way in, and it is often overlooked entirely.
The Health and Safety Executive records that being injured by an animal, and cattle in particular, causes most deaths in agriculture. Tractors and machinery get the attention, and the animals do more harm. If you have been hurt by livestock and assumed it was just one of those things that happens on a farm, it is worth asking.
Source: Health and Safety Executive, fatal injuries in agriculture.
Who counts as the keeper
Broadly, whoever owns the animal or has it in their possession. On a farm that is usually the farmer or the farming business, and it may not be the same person as your employer or the occupier of the land.
That matters if you are self-employed or were working someone else’s stock, because it can give you a defendant where you otherwise had none.
How much compensation can you claim for a farm accident?
There is no standard figure, and on farm claims the financial side is often larger and more complicated than the injury side.
- Machinery and vehicles. Tractors, telehandlers, quad bikes, balers and combines. Power take-off shafts, unguarded moving parts, and machines that moved when somebody was working on them. amputation claims
- Livestock. Being crushed, kicked, trampled or gored, most often while handling, moving or separating animals, and most often involving cattle.
- Falls from height. Roofs and fragile roof lights, ladders, bale stacks, silos and grain stores.
- Falling and moving objects.Bale stacks giving way, loads shifting, and objects falling from telehandlers.
- Slips and trips. Milking parlours, yards, uneven ground and obstructed walkways.Milking parlours, yards, uneven ground and obstructed walkways.
- Chemicals and confined spaces. Pesticide exposure, and slurry gas, which can be fatal within seconds and is a well documented cause of multiple deaths in single incidents.
- Vibrating tools. Chainsaws, hedge cutters and older tractors cause hand-arm vibration syndrome. vibration white finger claims
A note on age, because it is striking. The Health and Safety Executive records that workers aged 45 and over account for 80% of work-related fatalities in agriculture over the last five years. Farming is one of the few industries where people carry on working into their seventies, often alone. If you are past retirement age and were hurt working, that does not affect your right to bring a claim.
Common causes of farm accidents
Farming is the most dangerous industry in Britain by fatal injury rate, and the reasons are fairly consistent year to year.
General damages
For the injury itself and what it has taken from your life. Assessed against published brackets once an independent medical expert has examined you and given a prognosis.
Farm injuries are often severe, and severity is not the same as prognosis. What matters most is what you are left with a year or two later.
Financial losses
This is where farm claims differ from most workplace claims, because the work and the livelihood are frequently the same thing:
- Lost earnings, and future earnings if you cannot go back to physical work
- The cost of paying someone to do work you can no longer do on the holding
- Loss of profits where the business itself was affected
- Treatment, physiotherapy, travel and help at home
- Adaptations to machinery, vehicles or the house
The one people forget. If you run the holding yourself, the cost of replacing your own labour is a real and recoverable loss, and it is frequently the largest single item in a farm claim. Keep a note of who you had to pay to do what, and for how long. It is far easier to prove now than to reconstruct at the end.
Evidence that supports a farm accident claim
Farms are working sites and they change fast. A field gets cleared, a machine gets repaired, a gate gets rehung. The evidence that decides these claims often disappears within days, which is the main reason to make the call early rather than wait to see how you heal.
Worried about who you would be claiming against? Farming communities are small and a lot of people put off making the call for exactly that reason. In practice a claim against an employer or a business is answered by their insurer, which is what the insurance exists for. Say at the outset if that is your concern and we will talk through how it would actually work before anything is started.
No Win No Fee farm accident claims
A No Win No Fee agreement, properly called a Conditional Fee Agreement, means there is nothing to pay upfront. If the claim does not succeed, you do not pay us for our work, subject to the terms of your agreement.
If it succeeds, a success fee agreed with you in advance comes out of your compensation. There is a legal cap on that fee in personal injury claims, and it is worth understanding properly: the cap is calculated on your damages for the injury itself and your past financial losses, not on the whole settlement, because future losses are left out of the calculation. Your agreement will set out the exact percentage in writing before you sign.
Ask us to walk you through the figures, including what happens to disbursements and whether any insurance is taken out on your behalf, rather than taking a headline percentage on trust. That applies to any firm you speak to.
Farm accident claims
your questions answered
The questions we are asked most, answered plainly.
Can I claim for a farm accident if I am self-employed?
Often, yes, though the claim goes somewhere different. Being self-employed means there is no employers’ liability insurer to claim against, so the question becomes who else had a hand in what happened. That might be the occupier of the land where the premises or the organisation of the work were unsafe, another business operating on the same site, the maker or supplier of a machine that failed, or the keeper of an animal. If you were on your own land, using your own equipment, with nobody else involved, there may be no claim, and we will say so rather than string it out.
What if I was injured by livestock?
That may be a stronger position than people expect. Alongside an ordinary negligence claim, the Animals Act 1971 places strict liability on the keeper of an animal in defined circumstances, which means the keeper can be responsible whether or not they were careless. Cattle and horses are not classed as a dangerous species, so those claims have to meet three conditions, including that the risk came from a characteristic of the animal that shows itself at particular times or in particular circumstances, and that the keeper knew about it. A cow with a calf at foot is the obvious example. The conditions are demanding but the route is real, and it is frequently overlooked.
Will I get into trouble at work for making a claim?
The reassurance that actually holds is financial rather than legal: a claim against an employer or a business is answered by their insurer, so it is not money out of the farmer’s pocket. Employers are required to carry that insurance for exactly this purpose. On the employment side, protection from ordinary unfair dismissal currently requires two years’ service, and that qualifying period drops to six months on 1 January 2027. Because farm work is often seasonal, it is worth checking where you stand rather than assuming you are covered. If this is what is holding you back, say so at the start and we will talk it through before anything begins.
How long do I have to make a farm accident claim?
Usually three years from the accident. Where the injury built up over time rather than happening in one moment, which covers things like hand-arm vibration syndrome from chainsaws and tractors, or illness from chemical exposure, the three years can run from the date you first realised the problem was connected to your work. That is often much later. For a child the three years runs from their eighteenth birthday. Whatever your situation, ring sooner rather than later, because on farms the physical evidence disappears within days.
Can I claim if I was visiting the farm rather than working there?
Yes. Whoever occupies the land owes a duty to people who come onto it, which covers vets, contractors, delivery drivers, buyers, and members of the public on a public right of way. The duty is to take reasonable care that visitors are reasonably safe for the purposes for which they are there, and it takes account of the fact that children are less careful than adults. Claims involving footpaths crossing land with cattle on it are more common than most people would guess.
Does it matter that I have been farming for forty years and know the risks?
Find out where you stand
Tell us what happened and how you have been since. We will explain which route applies to you, what it would involve, and whether it is worth pursuing. If it is not, we will say so.
- Free, confidential and without obligation
- No Win No Fee available
- SRA-regulated solicitors
Check if you can make a claim
Takes less than 60 seconds
Other claims we handle
Find out whether you have a claim
Farming has a habit of treating serious injuries as part of the job, and a lot of people never ask whether anything could have been done differently. Sometimes the answer is that it could not. Often enough it is that a guard was missing, a machine had a known fault, or an animal had done it before. Ten minutes on the phone settles which one yours is.
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