It can be difficult to know if you’re eligible to claim against Wirral Borough Council. This guide is designed to help you understand under what circumstances you could be able to. Furthermore, it will explain the personal injury claim process and provide more information about making housing disrepair and data breach claims.
Local councils can be occupiers of public space. This means that they have legal responsibilities to ensure that the places they control are safe and secure for visitors. Additionally, they have obligations regarding how they can use your personal data, meaning that you may be able to claim if you’ve suffered as a result of a data protection breach. You may also be able to claim if they own a property you reside in that is causing you injury due to their negligence.
If you want to know more about whether you could claim against a council, please get in touch with our advisors. They offer free legal advice, are available 24/7 and can tell you in one phone call if you can claim. Also, if you have evidence of a valid claim, you may be able to make a No Win No Fee claim by using the services of our panel of solicitors. Don’t hesitate to contact us at a time that works for you using the details below.
- Call us on 0800 408 7827
- Contact us by using our website
- Please write to us using the Live Chat window on our website
Please read on to learn more about council housing disrepair claims, personal injury claims and the concept of a data breach claim against Wirral Borough Council.
Select a Section
- What To Know When Making Personal Injury Claims Against A Council
- Claiming For A Data Protection Breach Against A Local Council
- Initiating A Housing Disrepair Claim Against A Local Council
- Can I Make A No Win No Fee Claim Against Wirral Borough Council?
- Maximum Windows For Claims
- Get Advice On A Potential Claim Against Wirral Borough Council
- More Resources On Making A Claim Against Wirral Borough Council
What To Know When Making Personal Injury Claims Against A Council
Every controller of public space has a duty of care under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957. Making a personal injury claim against the council involves proving that their negligence led to your injury. Therefore, you would need to establish the following:
- They had a duty of care towards you
- Secondly, they breached this duty
- This breach of duty led to your injuries
Proving these is integral to the personal injury claims process. Evidence is key to highlighting the council’s negligence. This can include CCTV footage, photographs of your injury and medical scans.
As it can be difficult to build a case, you might prefer to use the services of personal injury claim solicitors from our panel. Their years of expertise could help you, and they could work on your case under a No Win No Fee agreement.
Additionally, there are many types of injuries you could suffer that may result in you making a claim. Reasons you may be looking into compensation claims against local councils include:
- Slips, trips and falls – Examples of slip, trip and fall hazards includes raised paving and potholes. (Usually, the defect of the raised paving needs to be greater than one inch in height for you to be able to claim.)
- Public place accidents – This could include suffering injuries in libraries, public swimming pools and the town hall. You could also be injured by broken playground apparatus, for instance, which could lead to a broken cheekbone or broken forearm.
- Road traffic accidents – If you suffer an injury from a vehicle collision caused by defective road surfaces, you may be able to make a personal injury claim against the council if they knew of the hazard but didn’t fix it.
Potential Personal Injury Compensation Payouts
In successful personal injury claims, you can receive up to two types of compensation. General damages relate to the physical and psychological damage caused by the accident. Special damages, instead, relate to the financial losses suffered due to the injury.
The amount you can receive for either of these potential heads of a claim depends on many factors. For example, the potential general damages compensation is affected by the nature and extent of your injury. We can provide you with a greater understanding of what you could receive by using compensation brackets created by the Judicial College.
The Judicial College analyses previous payouts for injuries, comparing the compensation amounts awarded with the nature and symptoms of the injury. This helps build the compensation brackets, which you can see in the table below. The Judicial College has provided these figures.
Injury Type | Severity | Compensation Amount |
---|---|---|
Arm | Less Severe Injury | £18,020 to £36,770 |
Arm | Simple Fractures of the Forearm | £6,190 to £18,020 |
Elbow | Moderate or Minor Injury | Up to £11,820 |
Wrist | (d) Fracture/Soft Tissue Injury | Rarely exceed £9,620 |
Hand | Moderate Hand Injury | £5,260 to £12,460 |
Shoulder | Moderate | £7,410 to £11,980 |
Back | Moderate (ii) | £11,730 to £26,050 |
Back | Minor (i) | £7,410 to £11,730 |
Injuries to Pelvis and Hip | Lesser Injuries (i) | £3,710 to £11,820 |
If you have evidence of a valid claim against Wirral Borough Council, you can contact our advisors using the details above. They can inform you of whether you can make slip, trip and fall claims (for example) and quickly and easily assess your situation over the phone to ensure you’re eligible. A consultation with us is free of charge, and you’re not obliged to continue with our services.
Claiming For A Data Protection Breach Against A Local Council
You may be wondering how you claim data breach compensation. A personal data breach is when a security breach leads to the alteration of, loss of, disclosure of, destruction of or access to personal data without authorisation or unlawfully. Data controllers and data processors are organisations that hold or process your personal data.
Personal data (or personal information) is any data that can be used to identify you, whether directly or indirectly.
Data controllers and data processors have rules and regulations they need to follow when handling personal information. The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 establish their legal obligations when it comes to processing personal data. These rules and regulations are enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Therefore, you may be able to claim if the data controller or processor’s positive wrongful conduct has led to a personal data breach and you suffered as a result. An example of this would be having your personal data stolen because the data controller did not sufficiently update their cybersecurity.
Furthermore, you need to have been negatively impacted to receive compensation for a data breach. This negative impact can come in the form of material damages (financial damage) or non-material damages (psychological injuries, such as depression, PTSD and anxiety).
This guide aims to help you understand what a valid claim against Wirral Borough Council looks like. However, if you have any questions, why not get in touch with our advisors?
What Is Considered A Data Breach?
There are many types of incidents that could lead to you making a claim for a personal data breach. The ICO provides statistics about UK data protection breaches. This helps to notify the public of the risks to their personal data and to showcase how organisations can still improve when handling it.
They’ve analysed the amount of reported local government security incidents in Q2 2021/22. As you can see above, the ways a local council can be involved in a personal data breach include:
- Failing to redact personal information
- Ransomware being used against their systems
- Emailing personal data to the incorrect recipient
- Posting or faxing personal information to the wrong person
- Providing unauthorised access to your personal information
In Q2 2021/22, there were 251 local government data security incidents reported to the ICO. Therefore, you may have suffered from a data protection breach. If you have evidence of a valid claim and want to get a compensation quote, please contact our advisors using the details above. They give free legal advice, and if you have strong grounds for a claim, they can put you through to a data breach solicitor from our panel who could help with your claim.
Initiating A Housing Disrepair Claim Against A Local Council
You could potentially make a housing disrepair claim if you’ve suffered an injury from the disrepair. To specifically make a claim against the council for this, the council should be responsible for ensuring the home is safe.
The Defective Premises Act 1972 requires your landlord to prevent you from being injured or your property being damaged due to defects in your home that they haven’t repaired or maintained. Your family and visitors to your home should also be protected under this Act.
The council may be required to ensure any of the following are safe:
- The exterior and structure of the property
- Installations for the supply of gas, water, sanitation and electricity (pipes)
- Installations for the supply of heating and water heating (heating/boiler)
- In flats, the communal areas and installations associated with it
To learn more about housing disrepair claims, please contact our advisors for free using the contact details above.
Can I Make A No Win No Fee Claim Against Wirral Borough Council?
You may be wanting to know what the benefits are for making a claim on a No Win No Fee basis. Our panel of experienced solicitors can work with you on this basis. A No Win No Fee agreement is also known as a Conditional Fee Agreement. This means you wouldn’t have to worry about paying your solicitor’s fee until a settlement has been agreed upon.
Furthermore, it means that you wouldn’t have to pay any of your solicitor’s fee upfront. The solicitor’s fee, in this regard, is often referred to as a success fee. As such, you wouldn’t need to pay this if your claim isn’t successful.
This is because the fee is taken out of your compensation amount. It’s a small, legally-capped sum. Due to your solicitor’s fee being paid out of your compensation, this can be a financially beneficial agreement because it means you wouldn’t have to pay it during the claims process.
Maximum Windows For Claims
Furthermore, an important aspect of making compensation claims against local councils is the time limit to begin claims proceedings. This differs based on the type of claim you want to make. Therefore, whether you can make a claim could depend on timing.
- Personal injury claims – You generally have three years from the date of the injury or from when you became aware of the injury being caused by negligence. However, this differs if you’re claiming for an injury you experienced as a child. In this instance, you would have three years from the date of your eighteenth birthday to claim if nobody had already claimed on your behalf before then. The Limitation Act 1980 clarifies this.
- Data breach claims – If you’re making a claim against a public body, such as a local council, you could have one year to claim. Alternatively, you could have six years to claim if you’re claiming against a private organisation.
- Housing disrepair claims – You could have six years from the date of the injury.
If you’re unsure as to how much time you might have to claim, why not contact our advisors? They’re available 24/7.
Get Advice On A Potential Claim Against Wirral Borough Council
For more guidance about making a claim, please refer to our team of advisors. They offer free legal advice, are available whenever you need and can provide you with a compensation estimate quickly and easily should you be able to claim. Furthermore, they can also put you through to a specialised solicitor from our panel if you have solid grounds to claim.
Additionally, you can also use their services under a No Win No Fee agreement. This means that you wouldn’t have to pay your solicitor’s fee until the settlement has been agreed upon. Call us today to find out more using the details below.
- Call us on 0800 408 7827
- Contact us by using our website.
- Please write to us using the Live Chat window on our website.
More Resources On Making A Claim Against Wirral Borough Council
To learn more about making a claim against a council for injury or a data breach, please use the links below.
The NHS provides counselling if you’ve suffered psychological damage. Please refer to their guidance to learn more.
They also provide medical advice if you’ve suffered a fracture injury.
Would you like to know more about making a complaint through the ICO? If so, visit their website.
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Thank you for reading our guide about what evidence could justify a claim against Wirral Borough Council.
Article by DUR
Edited by VIC