Personal Injury Claims

By Cat Mulligan. Last Updated 12th May 2023. Injuries sustained during an accident or incident can have an adverse effect on your daily life. They can cause you problems at work, affect your social life and have an impact on your mental health as well.

On some occasions, these injuries will be temporary and you’ll make a full recovery. However, some injuries can be life-changing and cause problems indefinitely. In this guide, we’ll look at when personal injury claims might be made if you’re injured because of an accident caused by somebody else’s negligence. We’ll look at the eligibility criteria for claiming, the time limits that apply and explain what amount of compensation might be paid.

Personal injury claim

Personal injury claim

If you would like to make a personal injury claim, our team is ready to help. When you get in touch, we’ll review your case during a no-obligation telephone consultation and provide free legal advice. Where your claim appears to be viable, we could connect you with a personal injury lawyer from our panel. To make the claim less stressful and less risky, your solicitor will work on a No Win No Fee basis if they take you on as a client.

Please continue reading if you’d like to know more about how the personal injury claims process works. Alternatively, to start your claim right away, please call us on 0800 408 7825 today.

Select A Section

  1. What Are Personal Injury Claims?
  2. What Accidents Could You Claim For?
  3. Am I Eligible To Claim?
  4. Limitation Periods
  5. What Evidence Is Needed For Personal Injury Claims?
  6. How Is Personal Injury Compensation Calculated?
  7. Speak To A No Win No Fee Lawyer
  8. Useful Claims Guides

What Are Personal Injury Claims?

Personal injury claims are designed to put people back into the position, if possible, they were in before they were injured. Not all accidents that cause injuries or illnesses will lead to a personal injury claim. To hold any type of valid compensation claim your circumstances need to meet specific criteria. Personal injury claims are not fines or penalties, they look to compensate you for the pain and suffering caused by your injuries. Also if you have suffered financially because of your injury you could have any costs or losses reimbursed.

Therefore, when you make a claim, you don’t simply ask for a set amount of compensation to be paid. Instead, you must show through evidence the suffering you have been caused and any financial losses. Whether you have been injured following a slip, trip or fall, an accident at work or in a car accident, we believe the best chance of winning a fair amount of compensation comes from having a specialist personal injury solicitor on your side.

Throughout this article, we’ll explain how our panel of solicitors can help with personal injury claims. We’ll also show you what types of claims they can help with, how No Win No Fee solicitors work and the evidence you’ll need to supply to help prove what happened.

Importantly, it is our experience that not many personal injury claims require court hearings. In a lot of cases, claims are able to be settled amicably between your solicitor and the defendant’s insurers.

Personal injury claims can be complex and may require technical medical evidence to support them. Although a solicitor is not legally required for you to pursue a personal injury claim they have the experience, abilities, knowledge and legal know-how to be able to ensure the case is filed correctly. Therefore, once you’ve finished reading, why not call to see if a solicitor from our panel could help you?

What Accidents Could You Claim For?

So, what types of personal injury claims can our panel of solicitors help with? Well, they include:

Essentially, personal injury claims are valid when you have been caused an injury or illness that could have been avoided had those who had a duty of care to keep you safe and well failed in this requirement. As well as physical suffering, you could also make a claim for any psychological harm you’ve sustained as well.

Let’s move on to look at the eligibility to make personal injury claims.

Am I Eligible To Claim?

When a personal injury lawyer from our panel is sent a case to consider, they will check whether:

  • The claimant was owed a duty of care by the defendant; and
  • The defendant was negligent in some way and caused an accident; in which
  • Injuries were sustained by the claimant; and
  • The claim is being made within the relevant time limit.

Duty of care can be established in various ways but often comes from legislation. For example, road users owe each other a duty of care because of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Similarly, retail businesses will often owe customers a duty of care because of the Occupiers Liability Act 1984. Employers owe staff a duty of care to protect them as much as is practically possible when at work due to the Health and Safety At Work etc Act 1974. Don’t worry too much about this as it’s something that our panel of lawyers are able to check if your case is referred to them.

To check whether you have a valid personal injury case, why not check with our team today?

Limitation Periods

As mentioned in the last section, personal injury claims must be started within the applicable time limits. This is a 3-year period. It will either commence on the date of the accident or from the date when you found out your injuries were caused by negligence. The latter is often referred to as the date of knowledge.

Some scenarios where the rules differ include:

  • Child accident claims. Personal injury claims involving children can be made by a parent (or responsible adult) using the litigation friend process. The 3-year time limit doesn’t apply so long as the claim is made before the child’s 18th .
  • Diminished mental capacity. If an adult doesn’t have the capacity to deal with a claim themselves (in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act 2005), a friend or relative could represent them. Unless they recover, the 3-year time limit will never apply.
  • Historical abuse. If claiming through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), a 2-year time limit will usually apply from the date of the crime. However, if you were not able to report the crime until later in life, the time limit could begin from the date you told the police.

What Evidence Is Needed For Personal Injury Claims?

When making personal injury claims, evidence will be needed to show how your accident occurred, who was to blame and how severe your injuries were. To help prove these things, you could provide:

  • Medical records. You can request these from the hospital or GP who treated you.
  • Accident report forms. A copy of an accident report logged by businesses or your employer.
  • Photographic evidence. It is always a good idea to take pictures as soon as possible following an accident.
  • CCTV footage. Try to request security camera or dashcam footage as soon as possible as it won’t be available for long usually.
  • Witness details. Where the defendant doesn’t admit liability, your solicitor could ask any witnesses for a statement.
  • Financial records. To help prove any money you’ve spent because of your injuries.

If you would like us to review your evidence for free, please get in touch today.

How Is Personal Injury Compensation Calculated?

If you make a successful personal injury claim, you will receive general damages. This compensates you for your injuries and the pain and suffering they have caused you.

When solicitors and other legal professionals value this head of claim, they may refer to the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG). This is a document that offers guideline compensation brackets for different injuries at various severities. In the table below, you can find some of the amounts listed in the 16th edition of the JCG.

InjurySeverity LevelSettlement BracketFurther Information
NoseFracture (c)£10,640 to £23,130Multiple or serious fractures of the nasal complex that result in permanent damage and/or require a number of operations.
ArmSimple (d)£6,610 to £19,200Simple fractured forearm injuries.
ShoulderMinor (d)£4,350 to £7,890Injuries to the soft tissue in the shoulder where surgery isn't necessary and a complete recovery takes up to 2-years.
ElbowSevere (a)£39,170 to £54,830Severely disabling elbow injuries
BackMinor (i)£7,890 to £12,510Soft tissue injures that don't require surgery but take 2-5 years to resolve.
HandSerious (e)£29,000 to £61,910Where hand function is reduced to around 50%.
LegModerate (iv)£27,760 to £39,200Covers multiple or complicated fractures to (usually) one leg.
KneeModerate (i)£14,840 to £26,190Examples include torn meniscus injuries that result in instability.
Psychiatric DamageModerate (c)£5,500 to £17,900Significant impact but the claimant will have made good progress with recovery and receive a good prognosis.
PSTD Severe (a)£59,860 to £100,670Permanent PTSD symptoms that has an affect all aspects of the claimant's life.

Personal injury compensation may also include special damages. This aims to compensate you for the way your injuries have affected you financially. For example, under this heading, you could claim back the cost of:

  •   Essential travel.
  •   Medical bills.
  •   Prescriptions and medications.
  •   Domestic help and childcare.
  •   Loss of earnings.

To see whether you could sue your employer if you had an accident at work or if you could make a claim against a local council because of a tripping injury, contact our team of advisors today.

Speak To A No Win No Fee Lawyer

Our panel of solicitors want to make access to their services as easy as possible. Therefore, they offer a No Win No Fee service for all claims they accept. If your case is taken on, you’ll pay a success fee to your solicitor. This is a fixed percentage of your compensation. If your claim doesn’t work out, you won’t need to pay any solicitor’s fees at all.

So that everything is clear, what your solicitor needs to achieve before being paid will be set out in a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA). Also, by law, success fees are capped so you can’t be overcharged.

To check whether a solicitor from our panel could help, you can:

Useful Claims Guides

Here are some resources that might help you further:

We also have some other guides you may find useful:

Thank you for reading our guide on personal injury claims.