03. What action can I take?

There are several courses of action you can take, depending on what you feel you want.

• You may want someone to explain or apologise and make sure that no one else is hurt in the same way. See 'If you want to make a complaint' (below) for more on this.  
• You may want support or counselling to help you deal with what has happened to you (or to someone close to you). See 'Further Help' for organisations which can help you or put you in touch with support groups for your particular problem.  
• You may need help with money problems which you have because of the injury (for example, because you haven't been able to work). The Community Legal Service leaflets 'Dealing with debt' and 'Welfare benefits' have more information about this. But see 'If you want to get compensation' (below) too.  
• You may want compensation for money you've had to pay (or money you've lost) because of your injury, or for psychological injuries (if you suffer from depression, for example). See 'If you want to get compensation' (below). If you are claiming compensation and you have a strong case, you may be able to get some money paid to you before your claim has been dealt with fully.

If you want to make a complaint
If your injury was caused by a business or organisation (for example, a shop), but it was not a serious injury, you may not want to take legal action. You might be happy with:

• an apology;  
• an explanation of what went wrong (so that it doesn't happen to someone else); and  
• perhaps, a token 'goodwill' payment.

Depending on who was responsible for your injuries, you may be able to use an organisation's official complaints procedure. For example, if you were injured because you tripped on an uneven pavement, you could use the complaints procedure of the council which maintains the pavement.

If you are not happy with how your complaint was handled, you could still take legal action for compensation in the same way as if your injury was more serious. However, organisations can take a long time to deal with official complaints. So if you think you may want to take legal action, remember that there are time limits for starting it (see 'How do I take legal action?').

If you were injured because of some medical treatment you were having under the NHS, you can use the NHS Complaints Procedure. See the Community Legal Service leaflet 'Medical accidents' for more on what to do in this situation.

If you were injured by a police officer and you want to make a complaint (or take other action), see the Community Legal Service leaflet 'Dealing with the police'.

If you want to get compensation
If you want to get compensation for a personal injury you can ask a solicitor to take legal action for you, or you can use a claims assessor or claims management company to negotiate compensation for you.

However, if you were injured because of a crime (for example, you were attacked), there are other options. See 'What if I am a victim of a crime?'.

For a minor personal injury caused by a service provider, you could consider using a conciliation or arbitration scheme run by the trade association which represents them. But if you go to arbitration you may lose your right to take legal action afterwards.

Unlike other types of legal action, you can't normally get public funding (which used to be called legal aid) to help pay the legal costs of a personal injury case.