The Review has joined forces with local solicitors Debenhams Ottaway to offer our readers the best legal advice.

Below Howard Kent, partner at Debenhams Ottaway Debenhams Ottaway answers, a reader's question.

Q: I am an agency/contract worker. Do health and safety rights still apply to me if I am injured at work?

A: Howard Kent, partner at Debenhams Ottaway, responds: To succeed in a claim for negligence would depend on whether you would be classed as being in business on your own account and therefore in control of your own actions. A skilled worker is more likely to be treated as self-employed so would have to rely on any insurance they have personally taken out.

If a worker is essentially unskilled the party in control of the undertaking where you were injured i.e. the end user, may be liable to you. If in practice the end user had effective control over how the worker did the job, and over the organisation of health and safety on the site, the worker could be classed as an employee.

Liability will also usually apply where the end user is in breach of statutory duty, e.g. the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, as most of the regulations create liability to “workers” which is wider than “employees”.

Finally, with the exception of skilled contractors, if a worker is seen to be an employee of the agency, the agency could also be civilly liable for both an action in negligence and in breach of any statutory duty.