Cost & commercial
The headline compensation figure in an occupational lung disease claim is only part of the bill. The true cost runs through lost earnings, care, insurance and reputation, and it is set in motion by exactly the failures a working, tested LEV is meant to prevent.
The short answer
The headline compensation figure in an occupational lung disease claim is only part of the bill. The true cost runs through lost earnings, care, insurance and reputation, and it is set in motion by exactly the failures a working, tested LEV is meant to prevent.
The detail
Compensation itself comes in two parts. General damages, for the pain and suffering of the condition, range widely with severity: from a few thousand pounds for milder occupational asthma into the low tens of thousands, and for the most serious, life-changing lung disease well beyond a hundred thousand pounds. On top sit special damages for financial loss - and these are often the larger part by far.
Special damages are where the number grows. They cover earnings already lost and the future earnings of a worker who can no longer do the job, the cost of care, treatment and travel, and adaptations to a home or vehicle. Because many respiratory conditions are chronic and can force someone out of their trade, the lifetime loss claimed can dwarf the pain-and-suffering figure entirely.
Most claims are met by employers' liability insurance, which every employer must hold by law, so the business rarely writes the cheque directly. But a paid claim is not free: premiums rise, cover can become harder or dearer to obtain, and the excess and management time are the employer's own. A claim can also be brought up to three years from the date a worker knew their illness was work-related, sometimes long after the exposure.
Then there is what does not appear on any invoice. A claim is built on proving the employer failed to control exposure, so it draws in records, management time and legal support, and it can surface alongside HSE enforcement for the same failure. Reputation, client confidence and staff trust all take a knock - and behind it all is a person whose health, and often whose career, has been permanently damaged.
What it means for you
Set against all of that, the cost of prevention is small. A working LEV system, examined on time and backed by health surveillance where it is needed, controls the exposure that causes these conditions in the first place. And when a claim or an inspection does come, the current test report and the records are the employer's evidence that exposure was being controlled - the single most useful thing to have on file.
The true cost of a lung disease claim, in other words, is an argument for spending a little, reliably, on control and records. The examination and the logbook are cheap insurance against a bill that is measured in careers as well as pounds, and that no premium ever fully covers.
The service behind the guide
Questions
General damages run from a few thousand pounds for milder asthma to well over a hundred thousand for the most serious lung disease, with special damages often larger still.
Financial losses - lost current and future earnings, care, treatment, travel and home or vehicle adaptations - which for a chronic condition can exceed the pain-and-suffering award.
Employers' liability insurance usually pays the claim, but premiums rise, cover can get harder to obtain, and the excess, management time and reputation are the employer's own.
Generally up to three years from the date a worker knew their illness was linked to their work, which can be long after the exposure happened.
A working, tested system controls the exposure that causes these conditions, and the report and records become the evidence that exposure was being controlled.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
A working, tested LEV and a full record are the cheapest defence there is. We will help you keep both current.