What Evidence Is Needed For A Personal Injury Claim?

Evidence is needed to make a successful personal injury claim. Therefore, in this guide, we aim to help you understand what kinds of evidence can be useful. Topics covered in this guide include providing the criteria for when you can claim, highlighting the different personal injury claim types and the benefits of using our panel of No Win No Fee solicitors. 

If you prefer, our advisors can also confirm what evidence is needed for a personal injury claim. They offer free legal advice, are available 24/7 and can inform you in just a few minutes if you’re eligible to claim. Furthermore, if you have solid grounds for a claim, they can also connect you to our panel of expert solicitors who can work on your case on a No Win No Fee basis. 

Please get in touch with them at a time that suits you using the details below. 

  • Call us on the number at the top of the page.
  • Contact us through our website.
  • Message us using the Live Chat window on your screen.

Read on to learn more about how to prove a personal injury claim. 

evidence needed for a personal injury claim

What evidence is needed for a personal injury claim?

Select a Section

  1. Explaining Personal Injury Claims
  2. How To Build A Successful Personal Injury Claim
  3. Gathering The Evidence Needed For A Personal Injury Claim
  4. Personal Injury Statistics
  5. Compensation Settlements And The Evidence Needed For A Personal Injury Claim
  6. Working With No Win No Fee Solicitors
  7. Speak To Us About The Evidence Needed For A Personal Injury Claim

Explaining Personal Injury Claims 

A personal injury claim is a process designed to help people receive compensation for injuries they weren’t liable for. However, there are some important caveats to this. You can only receive compensation if your injury was caused by third-party negligence. 

Certain parties have a duty of care towards you. This means that if they breach this duty of care, leading to your injury, you may be able to claim. Proving the link between their actions and your injury is very important, which is why evidence is needed for a personal injury claim

Types of Personal Injury Claims

Examples of incidents you may be able to claim for include: 

  • A road traffic accident. Every road user’s duty of care in Britain is highlihted in The Highway Code. They should use the roads with standard care and skill.
  • An accident at work. Every employer has a duty of care to their employees as established in The Health and Safety At Work etc. Act 1974. They should ensure that they take reasonable measures to protect their employees’ health and safety at work.
  • An accident in a public place. In instances like this, the controller of the place could be liable for your injury if they didn’t take resonably practicable steps to ensure your safety, therefore causing your injury. Their duty of care can found be in the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957

The amount you could receive depends on the extent and severity of your injury and its consequences on your life. However, if you’re unable to prove that third party negligence led to your injury, you wouldn’t be able to claim successfully. 

Please contact our advisors for free legal advice to learn more about the evidence needed for a personal injury claim. They’re available 24/7 and can connect you with our panel of solicitors who may be able to work your case under a No Win No Fee agreement. 

How To Build A Successful Personal Injury Claim 

In order to make a successful personal injury claim, you would need to establish the following:

  1. Firstly, that the third-party had a duty of care towards you
  2. Secondly, that they breached that duty and caused an incident or accident
  3. Finally, that this led to your injury

Furthermore, another important aspect of the personal injury claims process is the time limit you can claim within. The Limitation Act 1980 establishes that: 

  • For most personal injury cases, you have either three years from the date of the injury or three years from when you became aware of it being caused by negligence to claim compensation. 
  • If you’re claiming for a breach of duty that caused an injury when you were a child, you have three years from the date of your eighteenth birthday to claim. However, if you wish to claim before this, a litigation friend could do so on your behalf.
  • Additionally, you can also use a litigation friend to claim if you don’t have the mental capacity to make a claim. A friend, family member or loved one can claim on your behalf. If you recover mental capacity and nobody’s claimed on your behalf yet, you would have three years to claim from the date of recovery.

Gathering The Evidence Needed For A Personal Injury Claim

You may be wondering, “why is evidence needed for a personal injury claim?” The burden of proof is on the injured person making a claim. (However, a solicitor can help you understand what evidence you can collect.) This is why evidence is crucial — it can improve the validity of your claim, strengthening your case, which could make you more likely to receive compensation. Ultimately, it’s only by proving that third-party negligence caused your injury that you would be able to receive redress. 

A particularly important piece of evidence could be getting an independent medical assessment of your injuries. This is integral to the personal injury claims process because a medical professional assessing your injuries and describing the likelihood of the accident causing them could strengthen your case. 

Other pieces of evidence that could also help you prove a breach of duty include: 

  • CCTV footage
  • Witness statements
  • Photographs of your injury and the scene of the accident
  • Medical scans

Please contact our advisors for free legal advice to know more about the evidence needed for a personal injury claim. They’re available whenever you can call us and can provide you with a compensation estimate over the phone. 

Personal Injury Statistics 

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) provides work-related injury guidance to employers in Great Britain. It illustrates how a workplace accident could happen to limit the number of injuries that people experience in a workplace. Furthermore, they provide accident at work injury statistics, as you can see above. 

They build these statistics from the injuries that are reported in the workplace. As such, the graph above highlights the top 5 non-fatal injuries to employees as reported in 2019/20. Slips, trips or falls on the same level account for 29% of non-fatal injuries, while acts of violence make up 9% and handling, lifting or carrying account for 19%. 

As previously mentioned, if you’ve suffered a workplace accident and injury due to employer negligence, you may be able to claim compensation. To learn more, you can also contact us using the details above. 

Compensation Settlements And The Evidence Needed For A Personal Injury Claim

While evidence is needed for a personal injury claim, the amount of compensation you could receive is based on many factors. This is because your redress can be affected by factors like the extent of the injury, whether any permanent disabilities have been caused and the length of the recovery period. 

Therefore, you could receive more compensation if your injury has led to permanent health issues that have impacted your quality of life and finances. The full effects of the injury will be assessed as part of the personal injury claims process. As such, you could receive more compensation if your injury is more severe. 

Furthermore, work done by the Judicial College helps indicate the amount of compensation you could receive. They analyse previous payouts, relating them to the injuries suffered to build compensation brackets. However, as these only indicate the compensation previously been awarded for these injuries, the figures below are not a guarantee of your potential compensation. 

The Judicial College has provided the below compensation table figures. They help show what you could receive and the different types of injuries you may be able to claim for. 

Injury TypeSeverityCompensation AmountDescription
Shoulder(b) Serious£11,980 to £18,020This bracket includes shoulder dislocation and damage to the lower brachial plexus leading to neck and shoulder pain.
Psychiatric Damage Generally (c) Moderate£5,500 to £17,900In this bracket, the injury will still cause issues to the injured person's ability to cope with education, work and life and future vulnerability. However, the prognosis will be good.
Brain(c) Moderate Brain Damage (ii)£85,150 to £140,870Injuries in this bracket cause intellectual deficit of a moderate to modest degree, where the injured person's ability to work is greatly reduced.
Chest(c) Lesser Injuries (ii)Up to £3,710Injuries in this bracket include soft tissue injuries or rib fractures that lead to serious discomfort and pain for only a matter of weeks.
Kidney(b) Up to £60,050An injury in this bracket causes total loss of natural kidney function or could result in a significant risk of future urinary tract infection.
Neck(a) Severe (ii)£61,710 to £122,860This bracket includes damage to discs in the cervical spine or serious fractures which are of considerable severity.
Arm(b) Injuries Resulting in Permanent and Substantial Disablement£36,770 to £56,180Injuries in this bracket result in substantial and permanent disablement. This could include serious fractures to one or both forearms.
Severe Leg Injuries(iv) Moderate£26,050 to £36,790This bracket includes severe crush injuries or multiple or complicated fractures, usually to a single limb.
Foot(f) Moderate£12,900 to £23,460Injuries in this bracket include metatarsal fractures that are displaced causing continuing symptoms and permanent deformity.
Toe(d) Serious Toe Injuries£9,010 to £12,900This bracket includes serious great toe injuries or multiple fracture or crush injuries to two or more toes.

 

If you can’t see your injuries in the compensation table above, why not reach out to our advisors, who can value your injuries for free?

Working With No Win No Fee Solicitors 

You may be wondering what the benefits of making No Win No Fee claims are. The benefits of having a solicitor work with you on a No Win No Fee basis include: 

  • Your solicitor’s fees don’t have to be paid upfront or during the claims process.
  • Your solicitor takes a success fee only once your settlement has come through. This is a small, legally capped portion of your compensation that covers their fee. 
  • You won’t have to pay any of your solicitor’s fees if your claim isn’t successful. 
  • There are no hidden charges. If you work with a solicitor using a Conditional Fee Agreement, all fees will be agreed upon upfront and you would only pay the solicitor’s fee upon the claim being successful. 

Our panel offer their services on a No Win No Fee basis for all accepted claims.

Speak To Us About The Evidence Needed For A Personal Injury Claim

If you have any questions or queries about the evidence needed for a personal injury claim, please contact our advisors for free legal advice at a time that suits you. You have no obligation to pursue a claim if you contact us. Furthermore, our advisors can put you through to No Win No Fee lawyers whose expertise could result in you receiving compensation. 

Contact us using the details below.  

  • Call us on the number at the top of the page.
  • Contact us through our website
  • Write to us using the Live Chat window on your screen

Further Resources

For more information about how to prove a personal injury, please use the links below. 

If you’ve suffered a broken bone, please read this NHS guidance for medical advice. 

The Department for Transport provides road accident and safety statistics for Great Britain. 

The HSE provides guidance on work-related accidents and investigations

Why not check out more of our personal injury claims guides below:

If you want to know more about the evidence needed for a personal injury claim, please contact our advisors at a time that works for you.  

Written by DUR

Published by VIC