Quick Answer
Personal injury compensation has two parts: general damages for the injury itself, guided by Judicial College ranges, from around £2,450 for minor back injuries to over £160,000 for severe ones, and special damages for your actual financial losses. This guide shows the 2026 guideline figures, how insurers value claims, and the three-year time limit that starts on day one.
The two halves of every compensation figure
When people ask "how much is my claim worth?", they usually mean the injury payout. But every personal injury settlement is built from two distinct parts, and the second one is frequently larger:
- General damages, compensation for the injury itself: pain, suffering, and loss of amenity (what the injury stopped you doing). Valued using the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG).
- Special damages, every provable financial loss the accident caused: lost earnings, treatment costs, travel, care from family, damaged property, future losses.
Two people with identical back injuries can receive wildly different totals, because special damages depend entirely on your circumstances, a self-employed plasterer off work for six months loses far more income than a salaried employee with full sick pay. Value both halves, not just the first.
General damages: the 2026 guideline ranges
Solicitors and courts value injuries using the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG), brackets by injury type and severity, updated periodically and used in every negotiation (our personal injury calculator applies them). The ranges below are the figures used across our claim calculators:
| Injury | Guideline range (general damages) |
|---|---|
| Neck / whiplash, minor, full recovery within months | £240 – £4,350 |
| Back, minor, recovery within ~2 years | £2,450 – £11,730 |
| Shoulder, minor | £2,450 – £7,540 |
| Hand / finger, minor | £800 – £5,680 |
| Knee, minor | £1,700 – £14,840 |
| Neck, moderate (fractures, accelerated degeneration) | £7,890 – £38,780 |
| Back, moderate (disturbance of ligaments, ongoing pain) | £11,730 – £38,780 |
| Shoulder, moderate | £7,540 – £19,200 |
| Hand / finger, moderate | £5,680 – £12,590 |
| Back, severe (spinal cord, permanent consequences) | £38,780 – £160,980 |
Where you land inside a bracket depends on the medical evidence: how long symptoms lasted, treatment required, effect on work and daily life. That is why claims are valued after a medical report, not from the accident report alone. For road-accident whiplash claims worth £1,000–£25,000 in England and Wales, fixed government tariffs replace the JCG brackets and claims run through the Official Injury Claim portal, the process is designed to be usable without a solicitor.
Special damages: where claims are really won and lost
Special damages are an accounting exercise, the more evidence, the higher the number:
- Lost earnings: net pay lost to date, plus future loss of earnings if your earning capacity is reduced. Self-employed claimants need accounts or tax returns.
- Care and assistance, even unpaid care from family is compensable at an hourly rate (commonly cited around £10–£15/hour in negotiations).
- Medical costs: physiotherapy, prescriptions, counselling, equipment.
- Travel: appointments, adapted transport while unable to drive.
- Future losses: ongoing treatment, reduced pension contributions, career impact. In serious-injury cases, future-loss calculations dominate the settlement.
Keep everything: receipts, payslips, a diary of symptoms and missed events. A contemporaneous pain diary also strengthens the general damages case.
The three-year clock
The Limitation Act 1980 gives you three years from the date of the accident, or from your "date of knowledge" if you only later connected symptoms to the incident. Children's claims run until their 21st birthday. If the defendant dies or disappears, insurers and the Motor Insurers' Bureau provide fallback routes. Practically, evidence degrades long before the deadline: witness memories fade, CCTV is overwritten, and medical causation gets harder to prove. Instruct a solicitor early even if you expect the case to settle quickly.
How a claim actually proceeds
- Report and record: report the accident at work or to the property owner; photograph the scene and get witness details.
- Medical attention, a contemporaneous GP or A&E record is the foundation of causation.
- Claim notification, your solicitor (or you, via the OIC portal for eligible road claims) notifies the defendant's insurer.
- Medical evidence, an independent expert examines you and reports on prognosis.
- Negotiation: offers are exchanged against the guideline brackets and your special damages.
- Settlement or proceedings, the overwhelming majority settle; court remains the fallback where liability or value is disputed.
What reduces a payout
Three things legitimately reduce compensation. Contributory negligence: if you were partly at fault, not wearing a seatbelt, for example, damages are reduced by your share. Failure to mitigate: unreasonable delays in treatment can reduce the claim. Periodical payments vs lump sums: in serious cases, insurers may offer annual payments instead of a lump sum; the headline number looks smaller but the total over a lifetime can be larger. None of these are reasons not to claim, they are reasons to value the claim properly before accepting the first offer.
Value your claim with real numbers
Our calculators apply the guideline brackets and the tribunal-grade structure above to your inputs: the personal injury calculator for general claims, the accident at work calculator for workplace injuries with employer-liability factors. They give you the realistic bracket before you speak to a solicitor, which is the fastest way to recognise a lowball offer when you see one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are general damages in a personal injury claim? General damages compensate for the pain, suffering and loss of amenity caused by the injury itself, what you have been through physically and psychologically, and what it stopped you doing. They are assessed using the Judicial College Guidelines, a judge-maintained book of bracket ranges by injury type and severity, adjusted for your specific medical evidence.
What are special damages? Special damages are your provable financial losses: lost earnings (past and future), medical treatment and prescriptions, travel to appointments, care provided by family, damaged belongings and future care needs. Unlike general damages, they are calculated from receipts and evidence rather than brackets, and they are often the larger half of a claim.
How long do I have to make a personal injury claim? The general limitation period is three years from the date of the accident, or from your date of knowledge if the injury was not immediately apparent. Children have until their 21st birthday (three years from turning 18). Claims against the armed forces or criminal injuries compensation have different rules. Miss the window and the claim is statute-barred, start early.
Do all personal injury claims go to court? No, the overwhelming majority settle out of court through negotiation, often via the pre-action protocols. Low-value road accident claims in England and Wales run through the official Official Injury Claim portal, which lets claimants without a solicitor progress a claim themselves. Court is the fallback when liability is disputed or the parties cannot agree value.
Will I have to pay to make a claim? Most solicitors take personal injury cases on a conditional fee agreement (no win, no fee), where the fee is a capped percentage of your damages, capped at 25% of general damages and past losses under current rules. Any deduction and insurance cost should be explained upfront in writing. Damages for the injury itself are largely protected from other deductions.
Does compensation affect means-tested benefits? It can. Personal injury payments are generally ignored for means-tested benefits for 52 weeks, but after that a lump sum held as savings can affect entitlement. A personal injury trust can ring-fence compensation from the means test if set up correctly, take specialist advice if you receive benefits before accepting a settlement.
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