Foot Injury Compensation Claims
Check if you can claim compensation
A load dropped on your foot, a fall on a floor that should have been safe, a machine that should have been guarded. If someone else was responsible, you may be able to claim. We handle foot injury compensation claims on a No Win No Fee basis and will explain your options clearly.
Regulated solicitors
Years' experience
No Win No Fee
Can you make a foot injury compensation claim?
Most people judge a foot injury by whether anything broke. If the X-ray was clear they assume there is nothing to talk about, and they carry on limping. That is the wrong test. A crush that breaks no bones can leave nerve damage and pain that outlasts a clean fracture by years.
The question a claim actually asks is different: was somebody responsible for keeping your feet safe, and did they fall short? An employer who never issued protective footwear, a site that left a floor slippery or a hole uncovered, a machine without a guard, a driver who did not look. If one of those describes what happened to you, the size of the fracture is not what decides whether you have a claim.
Twenty-six bones, and nothing between them
and the floor
The foot carries your whole weight on a structure of small bones, and at work it spends the day next to pallets, trolleys, forklifts, loads being lowered and machinery at ground level. Everything that gets dropped ends up at foot height.
Protective footwear exists precisely because of that, and it is engineered to a standard. When someone is hurt because they had no boots, the wrong boots, or boots they were told to buy themselves, the failure is easy to describe and hard to defend.
joules of impact a safety toecap must protect against, roughly equivalent to a 20 kg weight dropped from one metre
That is the level of impact protection the safety-footwear standard is built around. If your work exposed your feet to a risk that should have been controlled with suitable protective footwear, none was provided, and you were injured as a result, you may be able to claim compensation.
Foot injuries we handle claims for
From a bruise that never quite settled to injuries that change how you walk for good.
Crush injuries
A pallet, a cage, a load being lowered, a forklift wheel. Crushing damages soft tissue, nerves and blood supply as much as bone, which is why a normal X-ray does not mean a minor injury.
Fractures
Metatarsals, the heel bone, the small bones of the midfoot. Heel fractures from a fall from height and midfoot injuries are the ones that most often leave lasting stiffness and pain.
Slips, trips and falls
Wet floors with no sign, worn stair nosings, trailing cables, a raised paving slab or an uncovered hole. Slips and trips on the same level are the most commonly reported kind of workplace injury in HSE’s figures.
Machinery and cutting injuries
Unguarded blades, ground-level moving parts, chemical spills and burns. Where a guard was missing, disabled or never fitted, the paperwork behind that decision usually exists somewhere.
Amputation and toe loss
Losing toes or part of the foot changes balance, gait and what work you can do. These claims are built slowly and carefully, because prosthetics, adaptations and future care all have to be costed properly.
Nerve damage and lasting pain
Burning, numbness or pain out of proportion to the original injury, sometimes long after everything has healed on paper. It is recognised, it is assessed by specialists, and it is compensable.
Who has to buy your boots
Where a risk assessment says protective footwear is needed, the employer provides it and the employer pays for it. Not the worker, and not out of wages. That has long been the position for employees.
What changed on 6 April 2022 was who the PPE rules cover. The regulations were extended beyond employees to include limb (b) workers, broadly, people working under more casual or irregular arrangements who are not genuinely self-employed. If a risk assessment shows PPE is required, it must be provided to those workers on the same basis as employees, including free of charge.
- An assessment of whether the footwear is suitable for the actual risk, not just any boot
- The footwear itself, provided free of charge
- Information, instruction and training on using it
- Maintenance, storage and replacement when it wears out
Source: HSE guidance on the extended scope of the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations, in force 6 April 2022. Protective footwear is one type of PPE among several, and whether it was required at all depends on the risk assessment for your particular job.
- The injury itself, any lasting pain, and how far you can walk and stand now
- Surgery, physiotherapy, orthotics, adapted footwear and the appointments with them
- Earnings lost, and reduced earnings where standing work is no longer realistic
- Help at home, travel to hospital and adaptations while you could not weight bear
How foot injury compensation is worked out
Feet are valued on what you can still do on them. Standing a shift, driving, climbing a ladder, walking the dog, wearing ordinary shoes. Two people with the same scan can end up in very different places, and it is the difference that gets assessed rather than the diagnosis.
Because of that, these claims are usually valued once the picture is settled rather than at the first phone call. Where a job involves being on your feet all day, the effect on your working life is often the larger part of the claim.
Evidence in a foot injury claim
One piece of evidence in these claims is unusual, because it is a physical object rather than a document, and it often goes in the bin within a week.
Already thrown the boot away? Most people have, and it does not end a claim. Say so early, because it shifts the weight onto the issue records and the photographs, and those are worth chasing sooner rather than later.
No Win No Fee foot injury claims
Starting costs nothing, and if the claim does not succeed you will not pay for our work, subject to the terms of your agreement. If it succeeds, a success fee agreed with you at the outset comes out of the compensation.
Where it happened decides who pays. An accident at work is met by the employer’s insurers, a fall in a shop, car park or on a pavement by the occupier’s or the council’s, and a road accident by the other driver’s. Employers’ liability insurance is compulsory, which is why claiming against your own employer does not take money out of the business.
You will see the full terms in writing before anything is signed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know before starting your claim.
I was never given safety boots. Is that enough on its own?
It is a strong start rather than the whole answer. The questions are whether a risk assessment should have identified the need for protective footwear, whether suitable footwear was provided free of charge, and whether having it would have prevented or reduced your injury. Being given the wrong type, or a worn out pair nobody replaced, can be as much of a failure as being given nothing.
Can I claim if I am agency, casual or on a short contract?
Usually, and the position improved on 6 April 2022. The PPE regulations were extended beyond employees to cover casual and contract workers, so an employer cannot assume the duty to provide protective footwear stops at people with a permanent contract. Separately, whoever controls a site owes duties to the people working on it whatever their contract says. If you were told the rules did not apply to you because you were agency, that is worth checking rather than accepting.
Nothing was broken. Can I still claim?
Yes. A clear X-ray rules out a fracture, not an injury. Crushing damages soft tissue, ligaments, nerves and blood supply, and those injuries can leave more lasting trouble than a break that heals cleanly. What a claim is valued on is the effect on you, so if your foot still hurts, still swells or still stops you doing things months later, that counts whatever the X-ray said on the day.
Will claiming against my employer cost me my job?
People are the most reluctant to ask this one. Employers’ liability insurance is compulsory, so a claim is dealt with by insurers rather than paid out of the business, and dismissing someone for bringing one would expose the employer to a separate legal problem of its own. We cannot promise how any individual will behave, but the money does not come from your workplace and the process is handled away from it.
My foot still hurts long after it healed. Is that part of a claim?
It is, and it is common enough in foot injuries to be worth raising early. Pain that persists after the tissue has healed, or that seems out of proportion to the original injury, is a recognised outcome and is assessed by specialists in the same way as any other consequence. It also affects when a claim should be settled, because agreeing a figure before the picture is clear is how people end up short.
How long do I have to make a claim?
Usually three years, running from the day of the accident or from when you first realised your injury was linked to someone else’s failure, whichever is later. Children have until their twenty-first birthday, and there is no time limit while someone lacks the mental capacity to bring a claim. Courts can allow claims outside the period too. The practical point is separate from the legal one: CCTV and site photographs disappear long before three years are up.
Check if you can make a claim
Tell us where you were and what happened to your foot. You do not need a diagnosis, a scan result or any paperwork to get started, and there is no obligation to go ahead.
- Free, no-obligation review
- No Win No Fee available
- SRA-regulated solicitors
Check if you can make a claim
Takes less than 60 seconds
Not sure if you have a claim?
People walk on a damaged foot for months before they ask anyone, usually because nothing showed up on the X-ray. Tell us what happened and how it has been since, and we will give you an honest answer, free and with no obligation.
Related Blogs
