Horse-related insurance claims

As an employer you have a duty of care to ensure that there is a safe working environment for your employees. This means that you need to do everything that you can to reduce the number of accidents which occur on your yard and whilst people are working for you.

A recent insurance claim involves an employee who was pulled over by a horse when leading it out to the field. A seemingly innocuous incident, thought at the time to be a dislocated shoulder and a bruised hip… but three years down the line the employee still has problems with their shoulder, can’t lift their arm above head height, can’t work with horses because they are not up to the job physically and has therefore had a loss of confidence around horses and can’t get any other job in the industry.

This seemingly innocuous incident is now an insurance claim potentially totalling tens of thousands of pounds.

‘It’s not fair’, ‘the person shouldn’t claim’, ‘my other employees would be able to work with that injury’ are all cries we hear regularly from clients. But that’s wrong. The employer has to reduce the element of risk when handling and riding horses to keep employees safe.

Part of this is common sense. It’s important to teach your employees to handle horses correctly. Another major point is having a Health and Safety policy which is up to scratch, relevant to your business and good enough to protect you in the event of a nasty accident.

Here at Lycetts we provide all clients with the framework to create their own Health and Safety policy. It is called The Lycetts’ Toolkit and it is a considerable resource which we are able to provide to clients. It is available for people to copy and use as a foundation for their own H&S policy.