Construction Accident Claims
Check if you can claim compensation
If you were injured on a construction site and somebody else was at fault, you may be able to claim compensation. We act for site workers whether you are employed, agency, self-employed or paid through CIS, and we will tell you where you stand before you commit to anything.
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Can you claim for a construction site accident?
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 spread the duty across several parties at once. Regulation 13(1) puts the principal contractor under a duty to “plan, manage and monitor the construction phase and coordinate matters relating to health and safety during the construction phase to ensure that, so far as is reasonably practicable, construction work is carried out without risks to health or safety”. Regulation 15(2) puts a parallel duty on every individual contractor for its own work and its own people.
That is why a construction site accident claim frequently runs against the principal contractor, a subcontractor, or both. The party that created the hazard and the party that pays you are regularly different companies, and on a busy site the firm at fault may be one whose name you have never had reason to learn.
A regulation breach is not an automatic payout
Since section 69 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, breaching one of these regulations is no longer a civil wrong on its own for accidents on or after 1 October 2013. The claim itself is in negligence. What the regulations do is set the standard you were entitled to expect, and a court measures the contractor against it.
They matter for a second reason that is more practical. Regulations force documents into existence, with dates on them. An inspection that should have happened every seven days leaves a record, or leaves a gap where the record should be. Anyone who tells you a regulation breach automatically produces a payout is overselling it. Anyone who tells you the regulations do not matter has not tried to run one of these claims.
How dangerous construction work actually is
Numbers rather than adjectives, each one with the year it belongs to and the release it came from.
Of those 3,726 reported injuries, 1,525 were specified injuries, meaning fractures, amputations, crush injuries and the like, and 2,201 kept the worker off normal duties for more than seven days. That is 41 per cent and 59 per cent of the total, and it is the clearest answer to anyone who assumes site injuries are mostly cuts and sprains.
The wider picture is bigger than the reported one, because not everything reaches RIDDOR. Averaged over the three years to 2024/25, an estimated 50,000 construction workers sustained a workplace injury each year, around 2.5 per cent of the workforce, and an estimated 79,000 were living with work-related ill health. Musculoskeletal disorders made up 53 per cent of that ill health and stress, depression or anxiety a further 19 per cent.
Falls from a height remain the single largest killer across every industry. There were 31 in 2025/26, around a quarter of every worker death that year, and across the five years to 2025/26 they caused 28 per cent of all worker deaths
Common causes of construction accidents
Many construction accident claims come down to one of these. Where a cause has its own page, follow the link for more detail.
Falls from height
Scaffolding, ladders, roofs, fragile surfaces and open edges. On a fall from height claim the first question is not whether you were given a harness. It is whether the job needed doing up there at all, because that is what the regulation asks first.
Scaffolding accidents
Collapses, missing boards, absent guard rails, and scaffold altered by one trade and never re-checked. If the inspection paperwork has a gap in it, that gap is your evidence.
Falling objects
Bricks, tools, materials and debris coming off a level above, with no brick guards, no netting and no exclusion zone underneath. These injure people who were not even part of the job going on above them.
Machinery and power tools
Scaffolding, ladders, roofs, fragile surfaces and open edges. On a fall from height claim the first question is not whether you were given a harness. It is whether the job needed doing up there at all, because that is what the regulation asks first.
Cranes, hoists and lifting equipment
Collapses, missing boards, absent guard rails, and scaffold altered by one trade and never re-checked. If the inspection paperwork has a gap in it, that gap is your evidence.
Manual handling
Bricks, tools, materials and debris coming off a level above, with no brick guards, no netting and no exclusion zone underneath. These injure people who were not even part of the job going on above them.
Site vehicles and plant
Being struck by a reversing dumper, an excavator or a telehandler, or by a load swung across the site. Keeping people and plant apart, banksmen and reversing aids were all supposed to be planned before anybody turned a key.
Electrical injuries
Buried and overhead cables, unsafe temporary supplies and tools that should have been taken out of service long before. On site these rarely stop at a near miss: they produce a burn, a fall from the shock, or worse.
Slips and trips
Trailing leads, uncovered openings, mud, spoil and poor site lighting. Unglamorous, and still the largest single category of reported injury at work across every industry in Great Britain.
Who is liable for a construction site accident?
More than one party can be liable for the same accident, and identifying all of them is most of the work. A claim aimed only at the firm that pays you can miss the party that actually created the hazard.
Claiming when you are self-employed, CIS or agency
Being self-employed or paid through the Construction Industry Scheme does not put you outside the law. It changes which duty you rely on, and which insurance policy ends up paying.
The duty is section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which obliges whoever runs the site to conduct their undertaking so that people who are not their employees are not exposed to risks to their health or safety, so far as is reasonably practicable. A self-employed bricklayer injured by an unguarded edge is owed that duty by the principal contractor in the same terms as a directly employed one. Your tax status is not mentioned in it anywhere.
What changes is the insurance.
The duty is section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which obliges whoever runs the site to conduct their undertaking so that people who are not their employees are not exposed to risks to their health or safety, so far as is reasonably practicable. A self-employed bricklayer injured by an unguarded edge is owed that duty by the principal contractor in the same terms as a directly employed one. Your tax status is not mentioned in it anywhere.
What also changes is how you prove the loss.
There is no payslip and no sick pay to point at. Keep your invoices, your day rate records, your CIS statements, your diary of booked work and the messages where jobs were agreed or cancelled. Being paid in cash do
Agency workers sit between the two.
The agency, the end client and the principal contractor can each carry part of the duty. Which of them answers for your accident depends on who directed the work and who controlled the hazard, and those are often two different organisations.
Can you claim for an injury while working from home?
There is no law that says a worker can never be treated badly for bringing an injury claim. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. What it gives you instead is narrower, and more useful.
Two different provisions cover two different things, and which one applies to you depends on what actually happened after the accident.
Neither of those covers simply bringing a compensation claim, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What they cover is what usually happened first, which is that somebody reported a danger. If you raised the hazard before you were hurt, you are in considerably stronger territory than the bare claim alone would put you in, and it is worth telling us about at the first call rather than the fifth.
The practical reason most working relationships survive. The claim is run against an insurance policy rather than against the people you work alongside. Employers’ liability cover is compulsory, so for employees there is always a policy behind the claim, and it is the insurer who pays and who instructs the defence. Your site manager is not the one writing the cheque and not the one arguing the case. That is a better reason to feel reassured than a promise nobody can keep.
How much compensation for a construction accident?
There is no single figure and we will not promise you one. Construction accident compensation is built from two parts, and on a serious injury the second is usually the larger.
The injury itself
Valued once an independent medical expert has examined you and reported on what you suffered and how long it is expected to last. Courts assess this against the Judicial College Guidelines, now in their 18th edition, published on 9 April 2026, which raised the previous figures by 8.26 per cent. Anyone quoting you a number before that report exists is describing somebody else’s case.
What the injury has cost you
Proved with documents rather than opinion:
If you were partly at fault
Not wearing a hard hat or other PPE does not end a claim. Under section 1(1) of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 a claim “shall not be defeated by reason of the fault of the person suffering the damage”, though damages are reduced to the extent the court thinks just and equitable.
Two questions decide the size of that reduction, and they are worth asking rather than accepting: was the equipment actually provided and available, and would wearing it have made any difference to this particular injury. If the site was unsafe regardless, or the right kit was never issued, the reduction may be small or nothing at all.
Time limits on a construction claim
Three years from the date of the accident in most cases, under section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980. Three situations on site run differently, and all three are easy to miss.
Conditions that built up over time.
Hand-arm vibration syndrome, noise-induced hearing loss, or a back that went after years of lifting. Here the three years runs from your date of knowledge under section 14, meaning the point at which you first knew the injury was significant and attributable to the work. That is usually a good deal later than the point at which it started bothering you.Valued once an independent medical expert has reported on what you suffered and how long it is expected to last. Courts assess this against the Judicial College Guidelines, now in their 18th edition, published on 9 April 2026. Anyone quoting you a number before that report exists is describing somebody else’s case.
Workers injured under eighteen.
The three years does not begin until their eighteenth birthday, under section 28, so an apprentice injured at seventeen has until they are twenty-one.
Where somebody has died.
The three years does not begin until their eighThere are two separate claims and they do not share a provision. The claim that belonged to the person who died survives for their estate, and section 11(5) runs that period from the date of death or from the personal representative’s date of knowledge, whichever is later. A dependency claim brought by the family under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 has its own limitation provision in section 12. If you are dealing with both, do not assume one deadline covers the other.teenth birthday, under section 28, so an apprentice injured at seventeen has until they are twenty-one.
If you are already outside three years
A court has a discretion under section 33 to let a late claim proceed where it would be equitable. It is a discretion rather than an entitlement and it is not something to plan around. If you are anywhere near the three years, ring rather than wait.
Evidence that supports your claim
A construction accident claim is stronger with clear evidence of how the accident happened and how the injury has affected you. You do not need to gather everything before you get in touch. We can help.
Self-employed or on CIS? You can still claim. Keep any invoices, day-rate records and messages about the work, and we can help gather the rest.
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You can start a construction accident claim without paying anything upfront. If your claim is unsuccessful, you will not pay a fee for our work, subject to the terms of your agreement.
If your claim succeeds, an agreed success fee is deducted from your compensation. Your solicitor will explain this clearly before you commit to anything.
You will see the full terms in writing before your claim begins.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know before starting your claim.
Can I claim if I am self-employed or work under CIS?
Usually yes, and the question to settle early is which insurance policy answers. For employees it is employers’ liability cover, which is compulsory. For a genuinely self-employed subcontractor it is normally the site’s public liability policy. Tell us who ran the site and who you invoiced, because those two answers point at the policy, and the policy is what pays.
Can I claim if I was paid cash in hand?
Yes. Being paid in cash changes how we prove what you lost, not whether a duty was owed to you. Start pulling together anything that shows what you earned and what you had booked: bank deposits, messages agreeing a day rate, a diary of jobs, the names of people who booked you. That evidence is harder to assemble late, so it is worth doing now even if you have not decided whether to claim.
Will I be blacklisted for making a claim?
It is unlawful to treat you unfairly for making a genuine personal injury claim. In practice, most claims are dealt with by the insurer rather than the employer or contractor directly, so the day-to-day working relationship is often not involved. If you are worried about this, we can talk it through with you.
Can I still claim if I wasn't wearing a hard hat or PPE?
Yes. A share of the blame reduces the damages rather than ending the claim. Two questions decide how big that share is: whether the PPE was actually provided and available, and whether wearing it would have made any difference to this injury. On a head injury it often would. On a crushed foot from a reversing dumper it may not have. Do not assume the reduction before anyone has asked those questions.
Who is responsible for a construction site accident?
Often more than one party, which is why it is worth naming all of them rather than the obvious one. The section above sets out who carries which duty. The practical shortcut is this: the firm on your payslip and the firm that created the hazard are frequently not the same, and on a busy site the trade that left an opening unguarded may be a company you have never dealt with. Finding them is our job.
How long do I have to make an construction accident claim?
Often more than one party, which is why it is worth naming all of them rather than the obvious one. The section above sets out who carries which duty. The practical shortcut is this: the firm on your payslip and the firm that created the hazard are frequently not the same, and on a busy site the trade that left an opening unguarded may be a company you have never dealt with. Finding them is our job.
Do I have to prove the contractor broke a regulation?
No, and it is worth knowing why the regulations still matter. The claim itself is in negligence. The regulations set the standard the contractor is measured against, and more usefully they force documents into existence: inspection reports, examination records, the construction phase plan. A regulation that required a record to be made is a regulation that tells us what to ask for and what a gap in the paperwork means.
What if the company I was working for has gone bust?
The claim is usually still possible, because the insurer remains liable even where the company has stopped trading. If you do not know who insured them, that is normal and not a dead end. Historic employers’ liability policies can be traced through the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office at https://www.elto.org.uk/, and we run those searches as part of the claim rather than asking you to.
Check if you can make an office claim
We handle construction accident claims from start to finish. Tell us what happened and we will review your details and get back to you, explaining your options in plain English with no obligation to go ahead.
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Most construction accident claims must be started within three years. Tell us what happened and we will explain your options clearly, with no obligation to go ahead.
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