Vibration White Finger Claims
You are probably not too late
Vibration white finger comes from years of using vibrating tools, and the symptoms usually turn up long after the work that caused them. That matters, because the time limit for a claim generally runs from when you connected the problem to your job, not from when you last picked up the tool. We handle vibration white finger and HAVS claims on a No Win No Fee basis.
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What is vibration white finger?
Vibration white finger is damage to the blood vessels in the fingers caused by using vibrating tools over a long period. The fingers go white and numb, usually starting at the tips, often triggered by cold. Feeling returns painfully as they warm up.
It is part of a wider condition called hand arm vibration syndrome, or HAVS. Vibration white finger is the circulation side of it. HAVS also covers nerve damage, which causes tingling and loss of sensation, and effects on grip strength and the joints. Many people have more than one of these at once, which is why the two names get used interchangeably.
The Health and Safety Executive puts it plainly: HAVS is preventable, but once the damage is done it is permanent.
The HSE calls it serious and disabling, and estimates that nearly 2 million people are at risk of it.
Vibration white finger symptoms
Symptoms creep up over years, which is why people put them down to age or the weather. If several of these sound familiar, it is worth getting checked.
Fingers turning white
Usually the tips first, often in cold or wet weather, then red and painful as they warm up.
Numbness and tingling
Pins and needles that linger after work, or hands that feel dead first thing in the morning.
Losing your grip
Dropping tools, mugs or keys, and struggling with buttons, laces or coins.
Loss of feeling
Not being able to tell hot from cold, or feel small objects properly by touch.
Pain and aching
In the fingers, hands and forearms, often worse at night and disturbing sleep.
Attacks getting longer
More fingers affected, more often, and taking longer to recover than they used to.
The HSE sets out what happens if you keep using high-vibration tools after the first signs: the numbness can become permanent, picking up small objects such as screws or nails becomes difficult, and the blanching attacks happen more often and spread to more fingers. That progression is the reason an early claim and an early change of work matter.
How doctors grade vibration white finger and HAVS
The HSE describes hand arm vibration syndrome as having three components, and they are graded separately. The vascular effects are the blanching, graded by how many fingers are affected and how far down each finger the whitening reaches. The sensorineural effects are the numbness and tingling, graded by whether they come and go or are constant and by how much fine touch and dexterity you have lost. The musculoskeletal effects are the loss of grip strength and the damage to bones and joints. Someone can be mildly affected on one and severely affected on another, which is why a claim usually needs all three assessed.
The grading is the clearest measure of what the work has cost you, and it is what a court uses to place your claim in a severity bracket. It is also why no calculator can value a claim from a description of symptoms alone.
You are probably not too late
Almost everyone who rings us about vibration white finger opens by apologising for leaving it so long. They used the tools in the nineties, or left the trade fifteen years ago, and assume the door shut a long time ago.
That is not how the time limit works for a condition like this one. There is no accident date to count from. Section 11 of the Limitation Act 1980 gives three years running from the later of two dates: when the cause of action accrued, and your date of knowledge. For a disease that builds up over decades, it is almost always the second that counts.
Date of knowledge is defined in section 14. It is the date you first knew that the injury was significant and that it was attributable to the act or omission you are complaining about. The Act says in terms that knowing whether any of it amounted to negligence as a matter of law is irrelevant. In practice that means the clock usually starts when a doctor connected your hands to your work, not when you last held a breaker.
Even if the three years has run, the court has a discretion under section 33 to let a claim proceed where it is equitable to do so, taking account of how long the delay was, why it happened, and whether the evidence is still good enough for a fair trial. That discretion is used in industrial disease cases, which is the other reason not to rule yourself out on the calendar alone.
Claims are also still possible against employers who no longer exist. Companies carrying on business in Great Britain have had to insure against liability to their employees since 1 January 1972, under the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, and the claim is brought against the insurer rather than the business. Tracing the right policy for work done decades ago is not always straightforward, but it is often possible, and it is our job rather than yours. Do not rule yourself out because the firm you worked for closed down.
The daily vibration level at which your employer had to act
Under the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005, which came into force on 6 July 2005, hand-arm vibration has a daily exposure action value of 2.5 m/s² A(8) and a daily exposure limit value of 5 m/s² A(8). At or above the action value the employer must reduce exposure as far as is reasonably practicable and put health surveillance in place. The limit value is a ceiling that must not be exceeded at all.
Those numbers mean nothing to most people, so here is the HSE’s own rule of thumb. You are likely to be above the action value if you regularly use hammer action tools for more than about 15 minutes a day, or some rotary and other action tools for more than about an hour a day. If that was your working day, your employer almost certainly owed you the duties below.
- Assess the risk and work out whether anyone was at or above the action value, measuring the vibration where necessary
- Eliminate the risk at source, or reduce it as low as reasonably practicable through different methods, better tools, maintenance, job rotation and rest breaks
- Never allow exposure above the limit value, and act immediately if it was exceeded
- Put employees at or above the action value under health surveillance, and keep a health record for each of them
- Tell you the action and limit values, the findings of the risk assessment, why and how to spot and report early signs, and that you were entitled to health surveillance
- Provide clothing to protect you from cold and damp, which make the condition worse
Most vibration white finger claims turn on the gaps in that list. Nobody measured the exposure. Nobody mentioned a limit. There was no rotation, and no one ever looked at your hands. Where health surveillance did happen and picked something up, the question becomes what the employer did next, because the regulations required them to review the risk assessment and to consider moving you to work that did not involve vibration.
For serious cases an interim payment can sometimes be arranged before the claim finishes, to help while you are out of work. Whether that is possible depends on whether liability has been admitted.
Tools and trades behind most vibration white finger claims
If you spent years on any of these, and your hands have changed, the two are worth connecting.
Construction and demolition
Breakers, jackhammers, drills, needle guns and compactors. The highest-exposure work of all.
Engineering and manufacturing
Grinders, sanders, impact wrenches, riveting tools and hand-held polishers on a production line.
Forestry and groundwork
Chainsaws, strimmers, hedge trimmers and mowers, often used outdoors in the cold, which makes it worse.
Road and rail maintenance
Tampers, breakers and track tools, frequently on night shifts with long stretches of continuous use.
Mining and quarrying
Rock drills and picks. Historic exposure here is behind a great many claims brought years after the event.
Motor and plant repair
Air tools, impact guns and cut-off saws used daily across a working life in a garage or depot.
The HSE names concrete breakers and pokers, sanders, grinders, disc cutters, hammer drills, chipping hammers, chainsaws, brush cutters, hedge trimmers, powered mowers, scabblers and needle guns. It also warns that you are at risk if you held the workpiece while a powered machine worked on it, such as feeding metal into a pedestal grinder, even though the tool was not in your hands.
What makes it a claim is not the tool but what your employer did about it: whether exposure was measured and limited, whether you were told the risk, whether rotation and breaks were arranged, and whether anyone checked your hands.
Vibration injury claims beyond white finger
Vibrating tools cause more than one injury, and a vibration injury claim can cover any of them. Several often appear together in the same pair of hands, and vibration injury compensation is assessed across the whole picture rather than condition by condition.
Hand arm vibration syndrome
The umbrella condition, covering the circulation damage, the nerve damage and the effects on grip and joints. Whichever of the two terms your medical notes use, the evidence and the process do not change.
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Compression of the nerve at the wrist, causing numbness, tingling and weakness. It is prescribed in its own right as disease A12, and the occupation prescribed for it is using hand-held powered tools whose internal parts vibrate so as to transmit that vibration to the hand. Tools powered only by hand are excluded.
Whole body vibration
Transmitted through the seat or the feet of people driving mobile machines and work vehicles over rough ground, rather than through the hands. The HSE links the large shocks and jolts to back pain, while noting that posture and heavy lifting also contribute and that further study is needed. The 2005 Regulations set separate values for it, a daily exposure action value of 0.5 m/s² A(8) and a limit value of 1.15 m/s² A(8).
More than one at once
Many people have the blanching, the numbness and a degree of carpal tunnel together. They are assessed as one picture of what the work did to your hands, not as separate claims.
There is no standard cancer misdiagnosis payout, and any firm that quotes one before reading your records and taking expert evidence is guessing. The amount depends on what the delay changed, which is a medical question specific to you. What we can do early is tell you whether the claim is likely to succeed, which is the question that actually decides whether to start.
- Pain, suffering and the effect on your daily life
- Lost earnings, now and in the future
- Treatment, care and support with daily life
- Help at home, equipment and adaptations while you recover
- Travel to appointments and treatment paid for privately
- A shortened life expectancy, where that applies
What vibration white finger compensation covers
There is no set figure and no calculator can work one out, because what matters is how far the condition has progressed and what it has taken from you. Two people with the same diagnosis can be in very different positions depending on their trade and their age.
Vibration white finger compensation has two parts. General damages cover the condition itself, graded on the two medical scales described above. Special damages cover what it has cost you, and on these claims that is often the larger figure, because the condition frequently ends a career in the trade someone spent their life in.
- The condition itself and how far it has progressed
- Lost earnings, and a career you can no longer do
- Retraining for work that does not need your hands
- Help with jobs at home you can no longer manage
- Treatment, equipment and the things you have stopped doing
General damages are valued against the Judicial College Guidelines, which set out severity brackets for hand-arm vibration syndrome. What moves a claim up the brackets is broadly this: whether both hands are affected rather than one, how young you were when it took hold, how much it interferes with work and with ordinary tasks at home, and whether it forced you out of your trade altogether.
For serious cases an interim payment can sometimes be arranged before the claim finishes, to help while you are out of work. Whether that is possible depends on whether liability has been admitted.
Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit and the old miners’ scheme
Vibration white finger is a prescribed industrial disease, listed as A11, so alongside VWF claims against a former employer you may be able to claim Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit from the Department for Work and Pensions. The two are separate and you can pursue both at once.
The benefit has its own test, and it is narrower than a claim. The blanching has to be cold-induced, episodic and occur throughout the year, with a sharp line between the affected and unaffected skin, and it has to reach a set number of fingers: three on a hand with five, two on a hand with four, and for someone with fewer fingers than that, any one of them. Alternatively it can be met by a significant, demonstrable loss of both sensation and dexterity with continuous numbness or tingling in a fingertip.
The benefit also only covers listed occupations: chainsaw work in forestry or on wood, hand-held rotary tools grinding, sanding or polishing metal, percussive metal-working tools used in riveting, caulking, chipping, hammering, fettling or swaging, powered percussive drills and hammers in mining, quarrying, demolition or road work, and holding material against pounding machines in shoe manufacture. A civil claim against your employer has no such list, so not qualifying for the benefit does not mean you have no claim.
The government scheme people remember is a different thing again. A Vibration White Finger Compensation Scheme ran for former British Coal employees and handled around 170,000 claims. The government lists it among its now closed schemes, so it is not a route that is open today. A claim against a former employer, which is what this page is about, is separate from it and is unaffected by its closure.
You are probably not too late
Almost everyone who rings us about vibration white finger opens by apologising for leaving it so long. They used the tools in the nineties, or left the trade fifteen years ago, and assume the door shut a long time ago.
That is not how the time limit works for a condition like this one. There is no accident date to count from. For illnesses that build up over years, the three years generally runs from the point at which you first realised your symptoms were connected to your work, which for most people is when a doctor said so. If that was recent, your claim may well be in time even if the exposure ended decades ago.
Claims are also still possible against employers who no longer exist. Companies were required to hold employers’ liability insurance, and the insurer who was on cover at the time can often be traced. Do not rule yourself out because the firm you worked for closed down.
the daily vibration level at which your employer had to act
Under the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005, an exposure action value of 2.5 m/s² over an eight-hour day obliges an employer to bring exposure down and to put health surveillance in place. There is a hard ceiling, the exposure limit value, at 5.0 m/s². Many claims turn on whether anyone ever measured this, and on whether the checks that should have caught your symptoms early were ever carried out.
Source: Health and Safety Executive guidance on the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005.
Tools and trades behind most vibration white finger claims
If you spent years on any of these, and your hands have changed, the two are worth connecting.
Construction and demolition
Breakers, jackhammers, drills, needle guns and compactors. The highest-exposure work of all.
Engineering and manufacturing
Grinders, sanders, impact wrenches, riveting tools and hand-held polishers on a production line.
Forestry and groundwork
Chainsaws, strimmers, hedge trimmers and mowers, often used outdoors in the cold, which makes it worse.
Road and rail maintenance
Tampers, breakers and track tools, frequently on night shifts with long stretches of continuous use.
Mining and quarrying
Rock drills and picks. Historic exposure here is behind a great many claims brought years after the event.
Motor and plant repair
Air tools, impact guns and cut-off saws used daily across a working life in a garage or depot.
What makes it a claim is not the tool but what your employer did about it: whether exposure was measured and limited, whether you were told the risk, whether rotation and breaks were arranged, and whether anyone checked your hands.
What vibration white finger
compensation covers
There is no set figure and no calculator can work one out, because what matters is how far the condition has progressed and what it has taken from you. Two people with the same diagnosis can be in very different positions depending on their trade and their age.
Vibration white finger compensation has two parts. General damages cover the condition itself, graded on the recognised medical scale. Special damages cover what it has cost you, and on these claims that is often the larger figure, because the condition frequently ends a career in the trade someone spent their life in.
- The condition itself and how far it has progressed
- Lost earnings, and a career you can no longer do
- Retraining for work that does not need your hands
- Help with jobs at home you can no longer manage
- Treatment, equipment and the things you have stopped doing
Vibration white finger is also a prescribed industrial disease, so it may be worth checking whether you qualify for Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit separately from any claim.
Evidence that supports a vibration white finger claim
There is no accident report here and no witnesses to a moment, because nothing happened in a moment. A VWF claim is built on your working history and your medical records instead.
Cannot remember the dates? Almost nobody can. We reconstruct employment history as a matter of routine, and we arrange the medical assessment.
No Win No Fee vibration
white finger claims
Where a claim can be taken on this basis, you can start without paying anything upfront. If the claim is not successful, you will not pay a fee for our work, subject to the terms of your agreement.
If it succeeds, a success fee agreed with you in advance is deducted from your compensation, and insurance is usually arranged to cover the other side’s costs. You will see the percentage in writing before you sign anything.
Asking whether you have a claim commits you to nothing, and there is no cold calling afterwards.
Vibration white finger claims
your questions answered
The questions we are asked most, answered plainly.
I stopped using the tools years ago. Am I too late to claim?
Very possibly not. There is no accident date on a claim like this, so the three years generally runs from when you first connected your symptoms to your work, usually when a doctor told you. If that happened recently, the claim may still be in time even though the exposure ended decades ago. It is worth one phone call to find out rather than assuming.
Can I claim if the company I worked for no longer exists?
Usually, yes. Employers were required to carry employers’ liability insurance, and the claim is brought against the insurer who was on cover at the time rather than against the business itself. Those insurers can often be traced even where the company was wound up years ago. Tell us who you worked for and roughly when, and we will look.
What is the difference between vibration white finger and HAVS?
Hand-arm vibration syndrome is the umbrella term. Vibration white finger is the circulation part of it, the whitening and the cold attacks. HAVS also covers nerve damage, which causes numbness and tingling, and effects on grip and the joints. Most people who have one have some of the others too, which is why the terms often get used as though they mean the same thing. A HAVS claim and a vibration white finger claim are handled the same way.
Is this the same as the old miners' compensation scheme?
No. There was a government scheme handling vibration white finger claims from former coal miners, and people still search for it. That is separate from an ordinary claim against a former employer, which is what this page is about. If you were a miner and think you may have missed the scheme, say so when you call and we will explain where you stand
Will claiming cause trouble if I still work there?
You should not be treated unfairly for bringing a genuine claim, and it helps to know the money comes from your employer’s insurer rather than out of the company’s pocket. Plenty of people claim while still employed. If you are worried about how it would go down, tell us and we will talk through the practicalities before anything is started.
How much compensation could I get for vibration white finger?
There is no set amount and no online calculator can value it, because it depends on how far the condition has progressed and what it has cost you. A specialist grades the severity on a recognised scale, and that assessment, along with your earnings and work history, is what the claim is built on. Your solicitor will explain what yours should include once that evidence is in.
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.
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Most people who call us had already decided they had left it too long, or that the company was gone so nothing could be done. Often neither is true. The conversation is free and puts you under no obligation.
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