A zero-hours contract does not, by itself, prevent an injury claim. The important questions are who controlled the work, what safety duties applied, whether a relevant failure caused your injury and what loss the evidence supports. The absence of guaranteed hours can make earnings assessment more complex, but it does not mean that work you would probably have done had no value.
The starting point is the actual arrangement, not a label on the first page of a contract. A casual worker who regularly accepts shifts, an employee with variable hours and a person supplied through an agency may have different employment rights and different sources of evidence. Their physical safety should not be treated as optional because the roster changes each week.
This guide concerns civil injury claims arising from work in England and Wales. Employment and sick-pay points reflect guidance checked on 2 October 2026. It includes a variable-hours earnings worksheet for preparing an initial enquiry through the workplace accident claims page. Alexander James Solicitors operates on private fees and does not offer legal aid. Ask the firm to confirm the scope and terms of any advice before treating an enquiry as an instruction.
Establish what the working arrangement actually involved
Start with the parties and the task
Write down the legal name of the organisation paying you, the organisation operating the workplace and the person assigning the task. Those may be the same business, but they may also be an agency, an umbrella company and a host organisation. Keep the assignment confirmation, payment statement and site details together so that trading names do not obscure who was involved.
Describe what you were doing when injured and who decided how it should be done. A contract may say that you choose when to work while a supervisor controls every aspect of the task once you arrive. The freedom to decline tomorrow's shift does not describe the safety arrangements during today's accepted shift. That distinction can help an adviser identify relevant responsibilities.
Include any change from your normal assignment. Were you moved from serving customers to unloading stock, asked to operate unfamiliar equipment or placed on a different site? Record who authorised the change and what instruction followed. A general induction at one workplace may not answer questions about a new hazard at another.
Preserve the terms and the practice
Keep the written contract, handbook, messages about shift acceptance and any later variation. Then explain how the arrangement worked in practice. Did you normally receive a rota, choose from available shifts or wait for a same-day call? Could you refuse without explanation? Were you expected to find a replacement? Did a manager penalise refusal despite the written terms?
Do not assume that one feature determines legal status. A substitution clause may require examination of whether substitution was genuinely possible. Regular work may be relevant without automatically proving guaranteed hours. The adviser needs the complete pattern, including breaks, other jobs and occasions when you declined work for personal reasons.
Acas's zero-hours guidance explains that rights depend on employment status and that a person on a zero-hours arrangement may be an employee or worker. It also distinguishes an ongoing relationship from separate short engagements. Those distinctions matter to some employment remedies, while the injury investigation must still examine the particular duties and accident.
Record the beginning and end of each relationship
A worker may remain registered with an agency while receiving no work from a particular host. Another may have a continuing contract with one business but irregular attendance. Record both the relationship dates and the actual assignment dates. Do not treat the date of the latest payslip as the only evidence of when the arrangement began or ended.
If you changed payroll provider, ask whether the underlying work arrangement changed too. Preserve communications explaining the change. If a business says that every shift is a separate contract, keep that statement alongside evidence of the broader pattern. Status and continuity questions can be legally significant and should not be resolved by selecting whichever date appears most favourable.
Investigate safety without treating flexibility as a defence
Identify the risk and the practical control
The fact that hours are variable does not explain why a floor was slippery, a machine was unguarded or a load was moved without suitable equipment. Describe the physical risk and the organisation of the work. Who supplied the equipment, set the route, allocated staff, gave instructions and could stop the task? These are factual questions capable of investigation.
Temporary and casual workers may encounter unfamiliar layouts, equipment or procedures. Record the induction actually received, including its duration, language and content. A signature on a generic induction form does not tell the whole story, but neither should it be ignored. Compare the record with the task you were asked to perform and explain any relevant gap.
HSE's guidance for gig, agency and temporary workers addresses health-and-safety responsibilities within these arrangements. A civil claim still requires its own assessment of breach, causation and loss. A regulatory concern can be important evidence without automatically establishing entitlement to compensation.
Describe the instructions you could realistically follow
If a safe method required two people, a lifting aid or a closed traffic route, record whether those resources were available. Explain whether you asked for help and what response you received. A written procedure can be relevant, but the investigation should examine how the work was actually organised on the shift.
Be candid about your own actions. If you used a shortcut, explain the circumstances without inventing a justification. Was the shortcut common, expressly instructed or taken without permission? What training had you received? A complete account allows responsibility to be assessed realistically and avoids the claim depending on a version contradicted by footage or witnesses.
A lack of experience is not a reason to guess technical causes. Describe what you saw, heard and did. If equipment jammed, record the jam and the response rather than asserting an engineering defect you cannot establish. A competent inspection may be needed to distinguish a maintenance problem, unsuitable equipment and misuse.
Notify everyone who needs the incident information
Report the injury through the relevant workplace procedure and preserve your own factual account. For an agency arrangement, notify the agency as well as the host. If a rota app has a reporting function, keep the submission confirmation and any response. A cancelled shift marked “unavailable” may not explain that you were absent because of a workplace injury.
The article on agency worker injuries and notification provides a responsibility map for arrangements involving several organisations. The immediate aim is to avoid an evidence gap caused by each business assuming another one holds the report. The choice of legal defendant should follow investigation, not a payroll label alone.
Irregular earnings need a transparent counterfactual
Compare probable earnings with actual earnings
An earnings claim asks what would probably have happened without the injury and what actually happened afterwards. With a fixed salary, the first figure may be relatively straightforward. With variable hours, it requires evidence of work availability, your own availability, accepted assignments, ordinary patterns and relevant seasonal changes.
Do not begin by multiplying your best week by the entire absence. That may overstate a normal pattern. Equally, do not assume the lowest week proves there was no likely work. A representative view may require several periods and an explanation of why one is more informative. A solicitor can assess the appropriate approach; the worksheet helps make the underlying information visible.
Keep actual earnings separate from the proposed baseline. If you worked fewer hours after the injury, record the hours and pay rather than simply treating every post-injury week as zero. If the business closed for reasons unrelated to the injury, that may affect what work would have existed anyway. The calculation should respond to evidence, not preserve a convenient initial assumption.
Distinguish accepted shifts from possible opportunities
An accepted shift supported by a message or rota is different from a general hope of being offered work. List accepted shifts first, with the date, hours, rate and evidence of acceptance. Then identify other work you would probably have received, explaining the historical pattern and any supporting statement from the employer.
A pending invitation may be relevant but should be labelled as pending. A shift you had declined before the injury should not later be presented as lost because of the injury. If you were unavailable for holidays, study, childcare or another job, record that honestly. Your adviser can then separate genuine loss from time you would not have worked in any event.
Where the roster is generated only shortly before the shift, preserve previous offers and response patterns. These may show how allocation normally worked. Avoid asking an employer to confirm a certainty that did not exist. A statement explaining the usual allocation method can be more credible than an unsupported guarantee of every future shift.
Account for seasonality and business changes
Hospitality, retail, events and care work can have different patterns. A festival worker's summer earnings may not represent winter availability. A retail worker injured before an established holiday peak may have evidence supporting increased hours. Identify the reason for a seasonal assumption and retain comparable previous periods where available.
Business-specific evidence can be more informative than a broad industry assumption. A venue may have cancelled events, a care provider may have changed contracts or a warehouse may have introduced another shift. Record known changes and when they were announced. Do not use national demand statistics as proof that your particular employer would have offered you a specific amount of work.
If you are new to the role, explain the limited history. An offer letter, training schedule, advertised assignment length or evidence from comparable workers may assist, but each has limitations. Label assumptions and identify what would confirm or challenge them. A short history is a reason for careful evidence gathering, not for inventing a long one.
Variable-hours earnings worksheet
Create one row for each week or pay period, using the same period consistently. Keep source documents linked to the relevant row. A spreadsheet is useful, but the value lies in the explanation behind the figures rather than the number of decimal places.
| Field | Entry to make | Evidence or qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Period | Start and end date | Match payroll and rota periods |
| Organisation | Employer, agency or host | Use the legal identity where known |
| Available hours | Hours you could genuinely have worked | Note holidays, study and other commitments |
| Accepted work | Confirmed shifts and agreed rate | Preserve acceptance and cancellation messages |
| Additional expected work | Unconfirmed but evidenced opportunities | Explain the basis and uncertainty |
| Actual work | Hours and tasks completed after injury | Include adapted duties and other jobs |
| Normal pay | Relevant gross and net figures | Identify tax, pension and other deductions |
| Payments received | Wages, sick pay and other relevant payments | Do not treat every payment as the same category |
| Proposed shortfall | Calculation requiring legal review | Avoid duplicate recovery or unsupported rounding |
| Explanation | Why this period differs from others | Injury, seasonal demand or unrelated change |
Reconcile the worksheet to source documents
Check that the total actual pay matches the relevant payslips and bank receipts, allowing for payment timing. A payment received in one month may cover shifts in the previous month. Record the work period and payment date separately. Otherwise, a delayed payroll payment can look like a period of lost earnings when it is only a timing difference.
If several agencies pay you, give each a separate identifier. One bank payment may combine wages, holiday pay or expenses. Ask for a breakdown where necessary. Do not treat reimbursement of a work expense as ordinary profit or count the same shift under both the agency and host organisation.
Keep an assumptions tab or a short note alongside the worksheet. Explain why you selected the comparison period, which records are missing and what could change the calculation. A transparent provisional figure is easier to refine than a confident total with no visible method. The purpose is to support an assessment, not to present an unchallengeable demand.
For the wider structure of an income claim, read proving lost earnings after an injury. Keep this variable-hours worksheet with the source records so the broader calculation can distinguish confirmed work, probable opportunities and payments actually received.
Three worked illustrations of variable work
Confirmed shifts lost during a short absence
Suppose, hypothetically, a casual catering worker accepted four six-hour shifts at £14 an hour before an injury. The accepted work totals 24 hours and £336 gross. This is a starting factual figure, not an automatic compensation award. The adviser must consider whether the injury caused the inability to work, applicable deductions, payments received and the legal basis of the claim.
If one shift was cancelled for all staff because the event did not proceed, it should not remain in the injury loss calculation simply because it appeared on the original rota. If the worker completed a shorter alternative shift, record that pay too. The worksheet should show the changes rather than conceal them in a single net figure.
A regular pattern without guaranteed hours
Consider a hypothetical warehouse worker who usually accepted between 18 and 30 hours a week over several months. The contract guaranteed none. After the injury, the worker could not perform the physical task for six weeks. The lack of a contractual guarantee does not answer what work would probably have been available and accepted, but the claim needs evidence rather than an assumption of 30 hours every week.
Relevant material might include past rotas, offers, refusals, the worker's availability and the employer's allocation method. A quiet period affecting everyone may change the expected hours. A documented busy period might support a different conclusion. The solicitor can test alternative calculations instead of relying on a single selected week.
Two jobs with different physical demands
A hypothetical worker combines evening hospitality shifts with remote administrative work. An injury prevents prolonged standing but allows some computer work. Continuing the administrative job does not necessarily show fitness for hospitality duties. The worker should describe the different tasks, hours, symptoms and medical advice rather than treating all work as physically equivalent.
The income record must include the work actually done. If administrative hours increase, the adviser will consider how that affects the overall loss. If working longer at home aggravates symptoms, record the attempt and seek medical advice. A truthful account can recognise both retained capacity and genuine restrictions without presenting recovery as all or nothing.
Sick pay is a separate entitlement question
Use the rules applying to the absence
As checked on 2 October 2026, Acas's statutory sick pay guidance reflects changes effective from 6 April 2026: the lower earnings threshold and waiting days were removed, while other eligibility conditions still apply. The applicable weekly amount is the lower of the statutory flat rate and 80% of average weekly earnings. Irregular working patterns require attention to qualifying days.
This means an old statement that low-paid casual workers can never receive statutory sick pay may be wrong. It does not mean every person described as self-employed or every registered agency worker automatically qualifies. Ask the payroll contact for the eligibility decision, qualifying days, earnings calculation and any reason for refusal in writing.
Keep the sickness notification and evidence of when it was sent. If your absence crosses a change in rules or involves linked periods, flag that specifically. A general online calculator may not capture all relevant conditions. Use current official guidance and obtain advice about a disputed decision rather than treating the injury insurer as responsible for resolving payroll law.
Separate payroll support from injury compensation
Sick pay may help with immediate income, but it is not a finding that the employer caused the accident. A civil claim can involve a wider assessment of injury and recoverable losses. Conversely, the employer's refusal to accept injury liability does not itself decide whether sick pay is due. Record the two decisions separately.
Provide the injury adviser with details of payments received, including any contractual sick-pay scheme. The treatment of payments in a damages calculation requires care, and double counting should be avoided. Do not simply add all missed wages to all sick pay received or subtract every benefit without advice. A complete payments record allows the proper treatment to be considered.
If cash flow is urgent, say so during the enquiry. An injury claim is not a guaranteed immediate source of income. Ask about appropriate sources of support and any available legal options without assuming an interim payment can be obtained merely because you are struggling financially. The conditions and evidence matter.
Keep future reforms separate from present rights
The Acas Employment Rights Act 2025 implementation page, checked on 2 October 2026, places new zero-hours and low-hours protections concerning guaranteed hours, shift notice and cancellation compensation among forthcoming 2027 changes. Detailed implementation must be checked before those rights are relied on. A planned reform is not evidence that a particular 2026 shift was already guaranteed by law.
Your present contract, actual arrangement and existing statutory rights still matter. Do not wait for a future reform to investigate an injury or respond to current adverse treatment. Equally, avoid signing a new document without understanding whether it changes the working relationship, resolves an existing dispute or simply updates information.
For a dispute about reduced shifts after reporting an injury, see worries about dismissal or adverse treatment. That guide separates employment deadlines from civil injury limitation and addresses the October 2026 tribunal transition. A claim about the accident and a claim about later treatment may require different advisers or separate agreed scopes of work.
Preserve records from apps and changing rosters
Capture the sequence rather than one screen
A rota screenshot can show a shift at one moment, but it may not show who offered it, whether you accepted or why it disappeared. Preserve the related notification, acceptance message, cancellation and explanation. Where the app allows a lawful export, keep the original export as well as a readable copy. Note the time zone if shifts span different systems or locations.
Do not fabricate missing confirmations by recreating an app screen. If a record has disappeared, note when you last saw it and ask the organisation to preserve its audit history. A solicitor can consider the appropriate route for obtaining relevant records. The absence of a screenshot may complicate proof, but it does not justify an inaccurate substitute.
Record availability with the same care as offers
Your availability is part of the earnings picture. Keep messages about holidays, childcare arrangements, examinations, travel or other work that would have limited shifts even without the injury. These facts may reduce some proposed losses, but disclosing them allows a credible assessment. Hiding them can damage the reliability of the entire calculation.
If your availability increased for a planned reason, preserve the evidence of that too. For example, a course ending or a second job finishing may explain why you expected more work. A later assertion that you would have accepted every possible shift is less useful than a message sent before the accident showing the change in availability.
Explain missing and inconsistent payroll records
Pay statements may use unfamiliar abbreviations or combine periods. Ask for explanations rather than guessing. If a rate changed, identify the effective date and whether the higher rate applied to all work or only particular duties. If cash payments occurred, tell the adviser and provide any genuine supporting records. Do not create invoices or receipts retrospectively to make the file appear complete.
Bank records can corroborate receipt but may not identify the work behind it. Match them to messages, timesheets and payroll statements where possible. If figures still differ, flag the discrepancy. A schedule with unresolved questions clearly marked is more useful than one that forces every number to agree by silently changing the underlying data.
Discuss a return to variable work in practical terms
A worker may be offered a small number of suitable shifts before recovering enough for their usual pattern. Record the nature of the duties and why they are manageable. A short seated shift and a long physical shift may have very different demands. Do not describe the return simply as “back at work” if that phrase conceals important restrictions.
Ask how the employer or agency will communicate the restrictions to the host supervisor. A suitable arrangement on paper can fail if the person allocating tasks does not know about it. Keep the agreed limits, review date and any incident where the actual duties differed. Seek medical advice if the work causes a concerning change in symptoms.
If no suitable work is offered, record the reason given. There may be a genuine lack of appropriate tasks, a misunderstanding about your capacity or a disputed allocation decision. Those possibilities should be investigated rather than assumed. The evidence can affect both the ongoing loss assessment and any separate employment question.
Prepare your enquiry around four concrete questions
First, who may have been responsible for the task and its safety? Provide the party map and the incident account. Second, what medical evidence explains the restriction on work? Provide treatment details and current advice without predicting permanent incapacity. Third, what work was probably lost? Provide accepted shifts, the ordinary pattern and your genuine availability.
Fourth, is there a separate employment or pay dispute? Identify removed shifts, a sick-pay refusal, a threatened termination or an imminent meeting. Ask which issue the adviser can handle and what funding arrangement applies. A clear division of work prevents an injury enquiry from being mistaken for protection of every employment deadline.
The useful outcome of the opening discussion is a plan for missing evidence and a realistic assessment of the next step. It is not a promise that every unworked hour will be compensated. Strong preparation shows both the support for the claim and the uncertainty that must be resolved.
Frequently asked questions
1. Does a zero-hours contract stop me bringing an injury claim?
No contractual label automatically decides the injury claim. The relevant duties, alleged failure, causation and loss need assessment in the actual working arrangement. Keep the contract and describe who controlled the task when you were injured. Variable hours may affect how earnings are proved, but they do not make an otherwise supportable injury or its consequences legally irrelevant by themselves.
2. Am I automatically self-employed because my hours are not guaranteed?
No. Zero-hours describes an arrangement about work availability, while legal status requires a broader assessment. You may be an employee or worker depending on the relationship. Preserve the written terms and explain how shifts, supervision, substitution and payment worked in practice. Do not assume that tax treatment, a payroll label or one clause conclusively answers every employment-law or injury question.
3. How can I prove earnings loss when no hours were guaranteed?
Use confirmed shifts, previous rotas, offers, acceptance patterns, pay records and evidence of your availability. Explain seasonal changes and work that would have disappeared for unrelated reasons. The question is what you probably would have earned without the injury, not simply what the contract guaranteed. A solicitor can assess the evidence and uncertainty rather than treating either the highest week or zero as automatic.
4. Should I include shifts that I had already declined?
A shift declined before the injury should not be presented as work lost because of the injury. Keep the refusal and its reason so the earnings schedule is transparent. If circumstances later changed, explain the evidence of that change rather than rewriting the original decision. Accurate availability records help separate genuine loss from periods when you would not have accepted work anyway.
5. What if my rota was deleted after I reported the accident?
Preserve any notifications, emails or screenshots you lawfully hold and record when the rota was last visible. Ask the organisation to retain the system history and explain the change. Do not recreate a screen or imply a later reconstruction is original evidence. Tell your adviser which system was used and who controlled it so an appropriate records request can be considered.
6. Can I claim for a cancelled shift if the whole event was cancelled?
The reason for cancellation matters. If the work would not have taken place even without your injury, it should not automatically be included as injury-caused earnings loss. There may be a separate contractual or statutory issue about cancellation, which requires its own assessment. Keep the original booking and cancellation explanation so your adviser can distinguish those different questions accurately.
7. Does continuing a second job mean I cannot claim any loss?
Not necessarily. Different jobs can demand different physical or mental functions. Explain why one role remained manageable and another did not, supported by medical and task evidence. Include the earnings actually received from both roles and any increased hours. A claim should reflect real restrictions and actual income, rather than treating the ability to perform one activity as proof of either complete recovery or total incapacity.
8. Do zero-hours workers receive statutory sick pay in 2026?
Eligibility must be checked against the current conditions and the actual arrangement. Rules changed from 6 April 2026, so older statements about waiting days and a minimum earnings threshold may be out of date. Ask payroll to explain its decision, qualifying days and calculation. Being on variable hours does not itself establish either entitlement or exclusion, and a disputed refusal should be assessed separately from injury liability.
9. Is sick pay the same as compensation for the workplace injury?
No. Sick pay concerns income support under the applicable employment or statutory arrangements. Injury compensation depends on the civil claim and recoverable consequences. Preserve details of payments received so the damages calculation can avoid inappropriate duplication and apply the correct treatment. An employer paying sick pay is not necessarily admitting negligence, while denying negligence does not itself resolve sick-pay entitlement.
10. What if I only started the job a week before the accident?
You may have limited earnings history, but other evidence can still be relevant: accepted assignments, the advertised role, messages about expected work and your availability. Explain the short history openly. Do not invent an established pattern. The safety investigation should examine the task and induction from the start, while the earnings assessment may need a more cautious approach to uncertain future work.
11. Can the host and agency both hold important evidence?
Yes. The host may hold site footage, supervision records and equipment information, while the agency may hold assignment terms, availability and payroll records. Notify both where appropriate and identify who controls each category. That does not mean both will necessarily be legally liable. It prevents an early evidence gap while the actual responsibilities and contractual relationships are investigated.
12. Should I use gross or net pay in my worksheet?
Preserve both figures where available and identify deductions, payment periods and any expenses or holiday-pay element. Do not assume a gross hourly rate multiplied by hours is the final recoverable loss. The legal calculation may require adjustments. A transparent worksheet should show the source amounts and assumptions so the adviser can apply the appropriate treatment without having to reconstruct payroll from a single total.
13. How should I account for a busy season I was expected to work?
Keep evidence showing why additional work was probable, such as prior seasonal rotas, confirmed bookings, advance messages or an employer's explanation of demand. Also record your ability and intention to accept the work. A busy industry in general does not prove a particular set of shifts. The stronger approach is to explain the business-specific pattern and acknowledge any uncertainty or unrelated cancellations.
14. Can I ask for a statement confirming the hours I would have received?
You can ask for a factual explanation of confirmed assignments and the normal allocation process. Avoid pressuring anyone to promise certainty where none existed. A statement should identify the writer's role, source of knowledge and limitations. Preserve the request and response. An honest account of usual practice may be more useful than a broad assurance that every available hour would definitely have been yours.
15. Are the new guaranteed-hours rights already in force?
As checked on 2 October 2026, Acas lists the zero-hours and low-hours reforms on guaranteed hours, shift notice and cancellation compensation among forthcoming 2027 changes. Implementation details and commencement must be checked before relying on them. Your current contract and existing rights still need assessment. Do not use an announced future reform as proof that a specific earlier shift was guaranteed by law.
16. What if my hours stop after I raise a safety complaint?
Keep the complaint, previous allocation pattern, your availability and the explanation for the change. A reduction can require separate employment advice, even if no formal dismissal letter is issued. Its legal significance depends on status, the right involved and the reason for treatment. Do not assume either that every reduction is unlawful or that a zero-hours contract permits retaliation without legal consequences.
17. Can I record unpaid help from family while my income is uncertain?
Yes. Keep a separate record of injury-related assistance, describing tasks, approximate time and how this differs from normal family support. Do not combine it with earnings figures or assign an unsupported commercial rate. Uncertainty about hours worked does not remove the need to document other genuine consequences. Your adviser can assess which losses are supportable and how they should be presented.
18. What if I was paid partly in cash?
Tell the adviser honestly and provide genuine records, including messages, timesheets, receipts already issued and relevant bank deposits. Explain any gaps instead of creating retrospective documents that appear contemporaneous. Tax and earnings evidence may need careful examination. The absence of a conventional payslip does not justify overstating income, and concealing part of the payment arrangement can undermine an otherwise credible account.
19. Does accepting a shorter shift mean I have recovered fully?
No single shift necessarily establishes full recovery. Record the duties, duration, adjustments and symptoms, along with the medical advice you followed. A short or adapted task may be manageable when the usual workload is not. Include the pay actually earned and explain any failed return attempt accurately. The assessment should reflect functional capacity and evidence rather than a simple working-or-not-working label.
20. What should I send when asking for advice about a zero-hours injury?
Send a brief incident account, the contract or assignment terms, names of the organisations involved, treatment details and a sample of rota and pay records. Identify confirmed lost shifts and any urgent employment issue. List missing evidence and who holds it. Ask the firm to confirm which matters it accepts, its fee terms and responsibility for time-sensitive steps before assuming every issue is being handled.
