If you run a law firm dealing in workplace accident compensation claims, you will find many occasions when you might have a client for whom English is not only not their first language, but a tongue they are far from fluent in.
Such clients may come from many countries, but of all the non-UK nationalities represented in Britain, Poles are among the most numerous. While government figures show the peak of Polish population in the UK was over a million in 2016 and 2017 before the figure dropped to 696,000 in 2021, it is still very substantial. While many will speak good or fluent English, far from all will.
Language barriers could be a major impediment to some seeking justice. This is where it helps to have a Polish interpreter on hand to advise any Polish person who has suffered an accident at work what their rights are and what compensation and redress may be due after such an incident.
For anyone who can read English well, it is not hard to learn about these things. After all, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website contains extensive data about the law and also provides regular press releases of cases that have seen employers prosecuted for breaches that have led to serious accidents.
Having an interpreter on hand may be particularly useful in this regard because if Polish workers are not fluent in English it is less likely they will be working on an office and more likely they will be engaged in manual or factory work, often using machinery that, if not handled correctly, may be dangerous.
Those involved in construction may be working at heights with all the possible dangers involved in that, for which employers have a duty to provide safety mitigations. As the HSE site’s list of prosecutions shows, many employers fail in this regard, often with dire results.
For this reason, it is crucial to ensure that the rights of all workers are protected, which means language support services will often be necessary to ensure access to justice.