Crazy Council compensation Payments
By tony leather, 15th Apr 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsPolitics
Perhaps the most worrying thing is the huge sums paid out to employees with seemingly trivial injuries, a glaring example the Cookstown council worker paid over £16,000 for cuts and bruises got from falling into a skip
Crazy Council compensation Payments
Believe it or not, in the past five years, following accidents at work, council staff around the UK have received a total of £75 million in compensation, with a real catalogue of comical payouts, including the worker getting £6,000 for breaking their wrist during a first aid course demonstration, when they fell over. The worst of this ridiculous catalogue of comic cuts is that taxpayers were the ones that funded paid most of the pay-outs, local authorities forced to endure large costs in excess fees to insurers.
£2.6million was awarded by Manchester City Council to injured employees, had a mere £250,000 paid by insurers, this council just one of 13 councils having to pay compensation, after admitting liability for accidents, of over more than £1million to staff. Top dog on this shameful list was Birmingham City Council - 274 payments, £4.9million, then Oldham paying out £3million to 152 staff, hundreds of claims for slips, trips and falls in the workplace, as well as manual handling injuries to carers and labourers.
Then we get the incredible cases of teachers attacked by pupils, refuse workers injured during bin collections, receiving thousands in compensation payments, Lancashire County Council even forced to pay £5,500 to a staff member of staff who injured their back after an accident when responding to a call to work, whilst an Islington teacher got£9,065 after a school guillotine chopped their thumb.
Perhaps the most worrying thing is the huge sums paid out to employees with seemingly trivial injuries, a glaring example the Cookstown council worker paid over £16,000 for cuts and bruises got from falling into a skip, or the one from Teignbridge paid £5,017 for dust in the eyes from operating a street cleaning machine, both of which incidents pale in comparison to the £226,000 paid to a North West Leicestershire District Council staff member of staff who smashed his knee cap through a scaffolding accident
More incredible payout facts include Lancashire paying a worker £9,575 for straining their back while loading a printer with paper -
Wiltshire paid a staff member £13,842 for being hit with a pool cue in the eye. Wrekin Council shelled out £1,500 to a worker suffering multiple injuries after falling into an open grave, and in a truly bizarre one, Birmingham City Council paying an obese staff member staff injured using a defective toilet unsuitable for a very heavy employee £1,750.
One council worker injured their back carrying a heavy bag of dog shit, North Kesteven council paying £6,000, while Welsh
Gwynedd County Council paid for a back injury caused by carryingjust 6 tins of beans to the tune of £3,500.Another truly outrageous incidence was the £16,759 paid for finger being bitten by a dog when mailing a calling card through a mail box by East Ayrshire Council
Not surprisingly, TaxPayers' Alliance campaign director Emma Boon has, called on councils to reduce the numbers of avoidable accidents, the bill for poor taxpayers, for compensation pay-outs unacceptably high, and even though some staff might have legitimate claims, a worrying rise in compensation culture in local government offices is becoming very prevalent, people getting away with claims for incredibly minor things. Councils have paid 7,494 compensation claims out to injured staff in the past five years, an awesome total of £74.6million, the real total quite possibly much higher as 205 of UK local authorities did not report results, though of 348 councils, only 50 clamed to have paid out no compensation claims at all.
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