Compensation for industrial deafness
Noise-induced hearing loss — still widely called industrial deafness — is permanent damage to the inner ear caused by exposure to loud noise at work. It builds gradually over years, which is exactly why it is so often mistaken for ordinary ageing and never claimed for.
It is entirely preventable. Employers have been under a clear legal duty to control workplace noise since the Noise at Work Regulations 1989, and under a common law duty going back to the 1960s. Where they failed, and your hearing suffered, you are entitled to compensation.
We act for people whose hearing was damaged in engineering, textiles, foundries, shipbuilding, construction, quarrying, printing, food processing, mining and manufacturing, across England and Wales, on a No Win, No Fee basis.
Industries and jobs we claim for
Any workplace where you had to raise your voice to be heard two metres away was probably above the level at which the law required action. These are the settings we see most.
- Engineering and metalwork Grinding, cutting, pressing, riveting, drop forging and machine shops — sustained high-level noise across a full shift.
- Textiles and weaving Weaving sheds and spinning mills were among the noisiest workplaces in the country, and West Yorkshire has a long history of both.
- Foundries and steelwork Casting, fettling, shot blasting and furnace work, usually in buildings that reflected and amplified the noise.
- Construction and demolition Breakers, cut-off saws, piling rigs, compressors and power tools, frequently with protection available but never enforced.
- Shipbuilding and marine engineering Riveting, plating and work in confined machinery spaces where noise had nowhere to go.
- Quarrying, mining and heavy plant Crushing, screening, blasting and long shifts in vehicle and plant cabs.
- Printing, packaging and food processing High-speed presses, bottling and canning lines, and continuous production machinery.
- Agriculture and forestry Chainsaws, tractors, grain dryers and workshop equipment, in a sector where hearing protection has historically been patchy.
How to tell noise damage from ordinary ageing
Almost everyone assumes their hearing loss is just age. Sometimes it is. Often it is not, and an audiogram tells the two apart in about twenty minutes.
Age-related hearing loss declines gradually and fairly evenly as frequency rises. Noise-induced loss does something different: it takes a bite out of the audiogram around 4 kHz, with some recovery above it. That dip — the notch — is the fingerprint of noise damage, and it is why a medical expert can attribute a proportion of your loss to noise and a proportion to age.
A few practical signs point the same way. Struggling to follow conversation in a pub or a busy room while managing fine one-to-one. Consonants disappearing so people seem to mumble. Tinnitus. And in particular, remembering that your hearing was muffled at the end of a shift and back to normal by the morning — that temporary threshold shift is both an early warning and good evidence that the noise was excessive.
You do not need to work any of this out yourself. If you were exposed to loud noise at work and your hearing is not what it was, that is enough to justify a test.
What your employer was required to do, and when
The duty is precise, which makes the breach easy to demonstrate.
The Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 require action at a daily or weekly average exposure of 80 dB(A): assess the risk, inform and train, and make hearing protection available. At 85 dB(A) the employer must reduce noise by means other than protection so far as reasonably practicable, designate and mark hearing protection zones, enforce the wearing of protection, and provide regular hearing tests. Exposure above 87 dB(A), measured allowing for protection, is prohibited outright.
The Noise at Work Regulations 1989 imposed materially similar duties from 1990 at 85 dB and 90 dB. Before that, the common law duty applied — and the courts have long treated the Ministry of Labour's 1963 publication *Noise and the Worker* as marking the point at which a reasonable employer should have known about the risk and acted.
So exposure in the 1960s and 1970s can and does support claims today. "Nobody bothered with ear defenders in those days" is a description of the breach, not an answer to it.
Conditions caused by workplace noise
Noise damage rarely arrives on its own. Most of our clients have two or more of these.
- Noise-induced sensorineural hearing loss
- Tinnitus, from mild to severe and intrusive
- Difficulty following speech in background noise
- Hyperacusis — painful sensitivity to everyday sound
- Acoustic shock from a single loud exposure
- Sleep disturbance caused by tinnitus
- Social withdrawal and low mood
Claiming when the employer has gone
Most of the exposure we deal with happened at companies that no longer exist. It almost never stops the claim.
Employers' liability insurance has been compulsory since 1969. The claim is met by the insurer who was on risk during your employment, not by the company as it stands today. Whether it was taken over, broken up, dissolved or wound up makes no practical difference to you.
Tracing that policy is the specialist part, and it is ours to do. The Employers' Liability Tracing Office holds a searchable database of policies. A dissolved company can be restored to the register so that proceedings can be issued against it, purely as the vehicle through which its insurer answers. Where no policy can be found for exposure from 2018 onwards, the Employers' Liability Insurance Bureau may respond.
All we need from you is where you worked and roughly when. Your HMRC employment record supplies the rest.
What to do now
Four steps, none of which costs you anything.
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1
Have your hearing tested Ask your GP for an audiology referral, or tell us and we will arrange an independent examination at no cost to you. The audiogram is what turns a suspicion into a claim.
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2
List where you worked Employers and rough dates is enough to start. Your HMRC employment record fills in the detail, and we can obtain it for you.
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3
Note what the noise was and what you were given Which machines or processes, how close, how long, and whether hearing protection was provided, enforced or simply left in a box by the door.
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4
Ask before you assume you are too late The three years runs from when you learned the loss was noise-related, not from when you left the job. Leaving an industry in 1985 does not mean the claim expired in 1988.
What an industrial deafness claim is worth
We do not print a compensation table, for the same reason we would not print last year's train timetable: the Judicial College Guidelines that courts work from are revised periodically, and an out-of-date figure sets an expectation that cannot be met.
The value turns on the audiogram — how much loss there is across the speech frequencies, and how much of it the expert attributes to noise rather than to age. Then on whether one or both ears are affected, how severe any tinnitus is, and your age at the date of assessment. Then on the practical consequences: hearing aids and the cost of replacing them for the rest of your life, batteries, and any effect on your earnings.
Get the audiogram and the rest follows. We will give you a bracket for your case, in writing, before you decide whether to go ahead.