Suggest leave it to the solicitor to figure out and put up your own defence if and when neeeded.

I am presuming that the lady was working in admin and not as a plumber? Find out who the 'controller' of the lady was and that person would be the responsible / liable person - usually in a simple agency supplying an admin worker case its the company controlling the agency person on a day to day basis that has the liabilities and if you ID who paid the invoice from the agency to the commissioner of their services for their service you will usually ID who is the controller NB: I do not think that a 'folly of their own' would apply if all she was doing was adjusting a radiator by its 'normal' day 2 day average adjuster system that anybody at home would be familiar with! If she went beyond the day 2 day adjuster system then a % of a 'folly' may apply

don't worry about it mate. Like the first responder says, let the 'sillysodder' sort it oot. Just dinnit let it happen again!

As previous poster said - tell insurers and let them sort it out. An agency worker would generally be reagded as an employee. A claimant solicitor would go against the employer - claiming under EL is by far the easiest approach. The EL insurer will then decide whether there is any hope of involving other parties such as landlord, maintenance firms etc. Just don't worry about it! Phil

For Triblim, It is not that easy.... employment of agency workers is a very murky affair. There has been lots of employment tribunal case law regarding wages, holiday pay etc. Insofar as H&S law is concerned it is generally recognised that the "firm" that has the greatest degree of control will be the employer. In many cases that is NOT the agency but the firm that issues the orders, that tells the agency worker what to do, that gives him the tools, PPE etc and that supplies the FLT that the agency worker drives etc. Phil

I am equally unconvinced with the assertion that this is ’an easy one’. The ‘tenets’ of civil law do not rely on there being an employer/employee relationship; so in that respect the first tenet being quoted isn’t entirely accurate. It is merely a matter of whether a duty was owed, not whether a duty was owed to an EMPLOYEE. I suggest that liability and insurance, while potentially linked at some point, are in fact 2 entirely separate things. I don’t think that you can necessarily hope to claim off someone merely because they have insurance (although I am sure that some do), but more a matter of who will either ACCEPT liability, or if no one does, who is subsequently FOUND to be liable; if anyone. Although the agency may be regarded as the employer for PAYE/NI purposes (and there have been plenty of ET cases to suggest that this is the case) it does not necessarily follow that they will be the employer for H&S purposes. I take the same view as Phil Grace, in that the person who has the greatest element of control over the worker is likely to be regarded as the employer, to all intents and purposes. I would have thought that in most cases an employer would be reasonably wise to treat an agency worker as an employee for the purposes of safeguarding their health and safety. Interestingly enough some agencies to my knowledge are still struggling with the concept of supplying PPE; as are some employers! I am left wondering whether the AWR will give rise to more clarity in time! As for who is to blame, who is liable, and who makes the payout? Only time will tell!

Just to pick up on what Stevel said that civil law does not care whether the injured person is an employee. That is only partly correct. I agree that the first "test" is whether there is a duty of care owed. But after that has been established then a further question is whether there was a master and servant relationship i.e. an employment scenario. If the answer to that is "Yes" then there is a furether set of "common law" duties that revolve around: a safe place of work safe premises and access/egress to them safe plant and equipment competent and triaend fellow employees. So there is a distinction between employee claimants and "the rest" - that is predominately claimants under Public Liability policies. Phil