Personal injury claims

Personal injury claims are brought in the civil courts, unless the personal injury (for example psychiatric injury) is the result of discrimination or harassment covered by the Equality Act 2010 (see Chapter 6).

In April 2013, very significant changes were made to the funding of personal injury claims in the civil courts, including workplace personal injury, by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPOA).

The new laws target the old “no-win-no-fee” regime under which claimant lawyers who accepted cases on a no-win-no-fee basis were only paid for their work if their client succeeded in the claim. When a claim succeeded, claimant representatives were allowed to charge the losing party (the employer) an extra “success fee”, which was then used to fund the cost and risk of other no-win-no-fee cases.

The new laws abolished “success fees” and placed a 25% cap on the amount that can be deducted from a worker’s compensation to fund legal fees.

The practical impact of these changes has been to make it much harder for workers to find affordable legal representation for a personal injury claim against their employer for work-related injury or illness. The worse affected are claimants with “low value” or very complex claims. But as Hugh Robertson, senior TUC policy officer for health and safety notes: “Although a claim of £3,000 or £4,000 may be considered to be low value by the government, it is not low value to a cleaner who earns £6 an hour”.

Legal aid has not been available to fund personal injury claims since 2000.