Fears of Stair Claim Bring Business Boom For Safety Company

A massive increase in the number of personal injury lawsuits being brought by people hurt at work, or in Public Buildings, has resulted in a business boom for a Company that makes stairs slip-proof.

Fibreglass Grating Ltd has reported a tenfold increase in orders for its Safety Stair Tread Covers in the last year. The Clacton based Company believes the massive upsurge in demand for their non-slip product is mainly due to the increasing tendency by employees or customers to sue the owners of premises where they have been injured.

Colin Burns, Managing Director of Fibreglass Grating Ltd, said "Britain is becoming a much more litigious society. People are now far more increased to sue someone if they slip on a wet step and hurt themselves. Personal Injury lawyers are flourishing, and are taking on injury claims in greater numbers. Many of them also work on a "no win no fee" basis, which encourages even more people to launch an action for damages. Employers and those companies or organisations whose premises are used by the public are getting very worried about the enormous cost of having to defend these personal injury lawsuits, and the even more horrendous payments for damage and compensation which the courts can aware in successful cases."

Fibreglass Grating has been manufacturing and installing slip-resistant Fibreglass Tread Covers onto stairs for six years. Until recently their customers had been largely in the industrial and commercial sector, where the stairways in offshore oil platforms, refineries, ships, factories and other locations with hazardous stairs were fitted with the Company's non-slip covers. Increasingly, however, the Company says that orders are coming in from organisat6ions such as local authorities, airport operators, and the owners of shopping centres and office blocks, in an effort to reduce the risk of someone injuring themselves on their stairways.

Colin Burns added "While local authorities and other big organisations will probably have made provision for accident indemnity. Nevertheless, the Insurance Companies have also become alarmed at the sizes of injury payouts they have had to make in recent cases. So, they in turn, are demanding big increases in insurance premiums if no precautions have been taken by a Company to avoid people falling down stairs. More organisations are now realising that prevention is better than having to make a big injury payout, which is why we're working flat-out to meet the increase of orders.